


chips of glass

by asymmetric



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Craigslist, First Time, M/M, met before canon au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:02:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asymmetric/pseuds/asymmetric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month before 5 Seconds of Summer's first gig, Calum puts up an ad on craigslist.</p><p>Ashton is the one who answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chips of glass

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this fic has consumed my life for the past two and a half months and i still can't quite believe i'm posting it finally! i don't even know what to say here. this is the longest fic i have EVER written in my eight odd years of being around in miscellaneous fandoms and it was definitely never meant to be this long. i hope you guys like it
> 
> i've gotta thank sara (cyclogenesis) for graciously putting up with me bothering her constantly about this fic. she helped me by telling me it was not complete trash and by telling me when i'd fallen off the track! this fic would be much less cohesive without her. 
> 
> there's also a fanmix playlist thing i made for this fic and you can listen to that [here!](http://8tracks.com/asymmetricboys/chips-of-glass-fanmix)
> 
> go and read about calum and ashton being dumb emotional babies and tell me what y'all think either here or at my tumblr (asymmetricboys) !!

A flare of light struck the corner of his eye, white spots spitting dream-like across his field of vision from the point of impact. He stopped, swaying under the ache at the back of his skull. Blinked once. Ducked his head. The ground sucked his legs forward, one by one, and the peak of the house in front of him rose up and cut a slice into the circle of the sun in the sky. The light faded.

Ashton's eyes still felt hot and fuzzy with the memory of it.

He stopped again, one foot up on the walkway to the house and the other still on the sidewalk, and closed his eyes, tipped off balance and trying to clear his head.

There was a bike lying on its side on the front lawn. It was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes again; the twist of silver handlebars sticking up from the grass, the flank of it sprawled at a strange, haphazard angle in comparison, like a person lying down with their head wrenched around to the back. It looked like a kid's bike, and the sight of it made him catch his breath, reminded all too suddenly of an old bike he'd used to own that looked exactly like that, the one he'd had since he was thirteen and that he'd wrecked two summers ago trying to pop a wheelie going down a hill. He felt strange—young and then too old in the same moment, like a hot flash turned cold at the edge. He couldn't feel the scrap of paper with the address pressed against him in his back pocket but he knew it was there. Did the kid he was here for own the bike?

Maybe I'll leave, he thought wildly, his body still bridging the gap between the common space of the street, and the kid's front yard. This is fucked up; he could be younger than he said, he could be anyone, he could be a sixty-year old man. Maybe I should just leave.

He knocked on the door and then rang the doorbell for good measure, one hard stab of his forefinger. The sun couldn't touch him in the shadow of the awning over the front step, and when he stared down at the ground his body looked washed grey, watered down. He shoved his hands in his pockets, knuckles knocking nervously against each other, and looked up just as the door was ripped open.

The boy in the doorway was smaller than Ashton and was wearing nothing but a towel, black hair dripping wetly onto child-round cheeks. Ashton's gaze flitted over him for a second, from his bare feet to the thin span of his waist to the long, red fingers clutching at the side of the door. He was breathing hard, slick chest expanding like an accordion, air whistling out noisily through his nose, almost musical. He was wet all over.

“Hi,” Ashton said, and felt his mouth twist into a sickly smile. There was relief fist-fighting with panic in his chest—the boy looked like his pictures, like he said he would, but that was young. He looked young, he looked skinny. And he was almost naked.

“Hi,” the boy echoed, and his voice was high and cute, words tumbling out like puppies rolling over each other. Just thinking that made Ashton feel weirder. “I was in the shower. You—you're early.”

“Sorry. Do you—do you want me to go?”

“No.”

The fingers on the side of the door flexed, digging in, and Ashton watched the stress of the movement travel up his arm, tense out the shape of his bicep, fresh and slight. Ashton felt hot all over, sick with it, like the sun had been beating down on him for hours.

“Just come in, quick.”

The boy stepped back and Ashton's body moved him inside before his brain could catch up. The door closed behind him and then it was just the two of them, standing in the entrance hallway, close among the scattered shoes and boots. There was a bead of water sitting full in the cut of the boy's collarbone and Ashton couldn't stop staring.

“You're Spencer, right?” he asked, like he hadn't spent ages looking at their messages to make sure this wasn't a stupid idea.

The boy stepped away from him.

“Yeah,” he said, shuffling away down the hallway. “And you said you were Jake?”

Ashton's too busy watching the shift of damp, bare shoulders to respond for a second to a strange name, but he jolted himself out of it, kicking his shoes off and following the boy—Spencer—down the hallway.

“Yeah.”

Of course it was a fake name. Spencer probably wasn't this kid's real name either, not if he had any brains. No one put an ad on craigslist under their real name.

“Cool,” Spencer said, glancing over his shoulder. The second his eyes met Ashton's, he looked away.

The hallway opened up into a kitchen, with three steps on the left leading down into a low living room. There was a full staircase leading up to the second floor a few metres in front of Ashton. The ceiling was too low for him to see the top of the stairs and it made him weirdly anxious.

Or it would have if it weren't for Spencer taking up all the anxiety in the room—he was practically vibrating as he paced around the side of the kitchen island, hiding behind it and looking around like someone was going to leap out and help him out of this situation.

“Sorry that I'm—” He waved a hand down at himself, shrugging. “I can go and put on some clothes. Did you want something to drink? I think we've got pop in the fridge. We could play some FIFA if you want, I mean, whatever you really—”

“Wouldn't putting clothes on be a bit backwards?” Ashton said, cutting in. The kid was floundering, clearly. He had to lighten the mood. “Considering what you wanted me here for.”

Spencer's eyes widened. He froze, then barked out a laugh that sounded more like the sound forced out of someone who'd just gotten punched in the stomach. It had been the wrong thing to say, Ashton knew instantly.

“Right,” Spencer said. “You're right, I, uh—”

“It was a joke,” Ashton said. “Sorry, I was just trying to break the ice a bit.” He laughed, and it felt strange in his throat. “This is a weird situation. I don't do this often.”

“Guess that's good to hear,” Spencer said, laughing nervously. “So, uh, how did you get here? Like, did you just walk or—you said you lived in the area, ish—”

“Took the bus,” Ashton said. “Just to the closest stop, then walked here.”

He didn't mention that he probably shouldn't have, that the bus stop hadn't been close enough to merit the money for the bus, that he wasn't really in a position to be spending money for something like this. Didn't mention that he should've just biked. Didn't mention the bike he'd seen on the lawn.

“Cool.”

The sheen of water on the boy's shoulders was starting to dry, melting into his skin, leaving it softly damp instead of shiny and slick. He looked so small, one hand clutching at his towel, his body curved in like he was trying to hide. There was something strangely familiar about his face, and Ashton wondered if he'd seen him on the streets before, had caught a glimpse of the cut of his jaw out of the corner of his eye while walking out of the video shop after work.

Ashton started moving towards Spencer, sliding his way around the kitchen island slowly enough that they both could pretend he wasn't moving closer.

“You're sixteen, right?” he asked. The kid was so small, so thin, but that was what he had said.

“Yeah.” The word came out sharp, like the cock of a gun, and Spencer visibly swallowed, said it again: “yeah.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Spencer's head whipped around to stare at him. “What? No.”

“Are you sure?”

Nothing about Spencer said “sure” to Ashton. They hadn't even done anything, and his eyes and his stance and the tense muscles at the back of his neck said his fingerprints were on the murder weapon and he was going to jail. Maybe Spencer had a boyfriend that he was about to cheat on. Maybe Ashton didn't care, didn't want to know, because it had been a while since he'd wanted to press his hands to someone's skin this much.

“Shut up,” Spencer said, and he turned into Ashton, put them face to face, only a foot of space between them. His eyes were closed, anticipatory, or maybe frightened, and he was breathing shallowly. “My-my parents won't be back until tomorrow afternoon and I—I was the one who put up that ad, okay, I know what I need.”

“Need?”

Ashton could feel him. Heat pulsing from Spencer's bare skin, soaking into the air around him and pushing up against Ashton's shirt front, rucking it up and teasing out static electricity. That's what it felt like, like the air between them was buzzing, electric. He was almost afraid to close the space. Didn't want to get shocked.

Spencer opened his eyes like he had weights on the lids; slowly and only half-way, peering up at Ashton.

“Shut up,” he repeated, and reached out.

His fingers skidded clumsily over the rise of Ashton's shoulder and then around the back of his neck, pulling him down. Their foreheads met first, sticky strands of Spencer's hair pressing cool and wet on Ashton's skin, and Spencer sucked in a breath, tipped his chin to his chest, away from Ashton's mouth. They hovered, rocking with the push and pull of Spencer shifting back and Ashton swaying into his space. Spencer huffed out unsteady breaths against Ashton's face, cool and minty fresh, like he'd brushed his teeth before he'd hopped into the shower. Preparing for this.

Ashton had to wait, that much was clear. Spencer couldn't look him in the eye, gaze flickering around his face, eyelids rising and falling like the sun in the sky. Ashton could feel it when Spencer's gaze landed on his mouth, the touch of his eyes as visceral as fingers. His eyelashes were curved dark against his cheek and Ashton couldn't stop staring. He nudged forward, his nose pressing into Spencer's skin over the cut of his cheekbone—a question, not a demand for more.

“Does it—” said Spencer, and then stopped, licking his lips. “Does it matter—”

He didn't finish the sentence, and after a minute of waiting, Ashton answered anyway.

“Whatever it is, it doesn't.”

Spencer kissed him then, a hard smash of mouths, fast, like he had to do it all at once or not at all. Ashton's eyes shut and he kissed him back, hands moving from dangling at his own sides to clutching at Spencer's bare waist, stabilizing him. Spencer was shaking under his hands, and he wasn't really kissing properly, just pushing their lips together, firmly shut, chaste and bruising all at once. He was so nervous it was practically bleeding from him.

“Hey,” Ashton said, pulling out of the kiss and pushing his forehead harder into Spencer's, a little 'I'm still here' gesture. “Hey, relax.”

Spencer opened his mouth like he was going to complain, and Ashton surged forward and took his bottom lip between his own, sucked hard. He let his teeth scrape over it as he let go, digging into the soft flesh just a tiny bit, and Spencer made a noise high in the back of his throat.

“Shh,” Ashton said, and he didn't know when his hands had moved from Spencer's waist to his cheeks, but he was cradling Spencer's face and moving in again, fitting their mouths together as softly as he could. And then—then it was a kiss.

Spencer was still at first, and it took a long moment of Ashton pressing into the sweet dip of Spencer's parted lips for him to respond, but when he did it was with a sharp, shuddering breath, his mouth opening under Ashton's like he'd been waiting forever for it. He kissed with a clumsy sort of fervour, and the shock of his enthusiasm made something flare hot in Ashton's gut, made him give back as good as he got, turning it into something open-mouthed and wet within seconds. He could feel Spencer's jaw moving against his palms and he stroked his thumbs back and forth over the bump of his cheekbones, angling his own jaw to push in deeper. Spencer's hands were clammy on the back of Ashton's neck, fingernails digging in, clutching, and Ashton wanted him to pull harder, wanted them to be as close as possible.

It was awkward; they didn't know how to work together yet. Spencer didn't seem to know what to do with his tongue and Ashton had to chase it around his mouth before Spencer figured out that it was okay to just go for it, to let their tongues rub slick and filthy against each other, to let Ashton suck on his. When Ashton pulled away for a breath, Spencer dove back in before he was ready and accidentally licked his chin, lurching back all stiff and horrified as soon as he'd done it. Ashton wanted desperately to laugh, but instead he smoothed his hands down Spencer's sides and just kissed him some more, trying to say 'it's alright, I thought it was cute, I won't make fun of you' with every twist of his mouth.

His body felt good under Ashton's hands, warm and firm, and Ashton wanted to dig his fingers in until he could feel blood surge hotter under the skin, until he could leave a bruise. The desire twisted sick in his head, and he pushed it aside, gentling his touch and sweeping his hands down a little further, right to the scratchy edge of the towel Spencer was still somehow wearing.

There was a shocky gasp of air against his mouth and then Spencer was pulling out of the kiss. Ashton opened his eyes, the world appearing fuzzy and punch bright for a second before it came together again. Spencer was looking down between their bodies, his mouth hanging open, red and swollen. The front of the towel was pushed out, sticking awkwardly away from Spencer's body, and something in Ashton's stomach swooped low and hot at the confirmation that Spencer liked this, was eager for it.

He giggled—couldn't stop it this time. Spencer's eyes shot up to his, a little self-conscious frown forming, and Ashton took his face between his hands and kissed him firmly, a short smack of contact. He stayed close when it ended, shuffling his feet forward until he could feel the bump of Spencer's dick under the towel pressing into his thigh.

“You want to do something about that?” he asked.

It took a second, but Spencer smiled, a smile that hit Ashton like a fist to his chest, his eyes squinching up and his mouth stretching wide and bright. He was unbearably cute when he smiled, when it was real, and Ashton felt a strange guilt churn up, distant and confusing.

“Okay,” said Spencer. “We can—my room is just—”

Spencer took Ashton's wrist in his hand and lead him up the stairs and down the hall. Ashton caught glimpses of family photos on the wall, Spencer with a dark-haired girl that looked like him, Spencer surrounded by people, and part of him wanted to linger, to find out more about the boy in the towel. But more of him just needed to get to this room and take that towel off.

Spencer kept shooting him little looks over his shoulder, slivers of the whites of his eyes flashing like chips of glass, and Ashton wanted to cut himself on that gaze. He crowded up behind Spencer when he paused at a closed door in the hallway, fumbling with the doorknob. He bent his head and opened his mouth over the sweet skin at the nape of Spencer's neck, right where the leftover water from his hair was still trickling down slow and cool, and he got a second to taste before the door was open and Spencer was lurching forward, out of his reach.

They tumbled inside, and Spencer kicked the door shut behind them. He didn't bother with the lights, but Ashton could see all he needed to anyway. There was a window on the wall opposite the door, thick blue curtains hanging in front of it, and mottled bands of light were spilling through onto a bed just below the windowsill. The sheets and blankets were kicked back already, and when Ashton slid his mouth away from Spencer's neck and over the rise of his shoulder he could see condoms and a fat little bottle sitting conspicuously on the bedside table, threatening.

“How do you want to do this?” Ashton asked, muffling himself against Spencer's skin.

“I—”

Spencer's head rolled back onto Ashton's shoulder for a second, the sound of his breath heaving loudly in Ashton's ear, and then he was turning suddenly in Ashton's grip, putting them face to face.

“I want you—to fuck me,” he said, his voice small.

The words went straight to Ashton's dick, and he couldn't help but rock his hips forward, grinding up against Spencer.

“Okay,” he said, guiltily thrilled because that—that was how he'd been hoping Spencer would want things to go.

He gave a little push, more of a suggestion than an order, and Spencer let himself fall back onto the bed willingly, his feet kicking up like a little kid over the edge before he squirmed himself backwards onto it fully. The towel was coming undone, one side spread out on the bed beside him and the other still draped over his lap, dragged down slightly from his movement to reveal the sharp cut of a hipbone. His prick was tenting out the front of the towel in a way that looked even more ridiculous now that he was flat on his back. But he looked so sweet and nervous, propped up on his elbows and watching Ashton like he thought Ashton might run, like he was actively fighting the urge to hide himself from Ashton's eyes, so Ashton didn't laugh like he wanted to.

Instead he pulled his shirt off and kicked his way out of his shorts, leaving only his boxers on to climb onto the bed, knees pressing indents next to Spencer's legs. Spencer's elbows slid out from under him, flopping him down flat, and he stared up at Ashton, his eyes bright and wide in the blue shadow of the room.

Ashton bent down and kissed him hard, pressing him back into the pillow. Spencer's hands came up, skating lightly across the plane of Ashton's back like skipping stones on water, touching only briefly here and there, hesitant.

“You can,” Ashton breathed, pulling back to look at Spencer. “You can touch me.”

“I'm not not touching you,” Spencer said, sounding affronted. His cheeks were flushed. Half of his hair was dry and sticking up and the other half was soaking a wet stain into the pillow. “Shut up.”

“Yeah, but you can, you know—”

Ashton reached down, fingers spreading out over the tense expanse of Spencer's stomach and then sliding under the towel. His knuckles skidded against the damp head of Spencer's dick, and then he was twisting his hand around to get a proper grip, stroking up slow and sure. Spencer's eyes closed, his mouth falling open soundlessly, and Ashton could feel his body arching up into the hand on him, thigh muscles twitching restless and ready where Ashton's knees bracketed him.

“—touch.”

He wanted to be smug, wanted to look like he was in control, but in the face of Spencer's response he was pretty sure his expression was something closer to awe, his voice dropping down low and soft. He stupidly wanted to tell the kid how beautiful he was, wanted to thank him for letting Ashton even be here in his house to see this. He curved himself down over Spencer instead, pressing his mouth to the blade of his collarbone. There was still some moisture from his shower there, and Ashton sipped at his skin like he could draw out more, pulling away only to ask,

“Is it okay if I leave marks?”

Spencer's head was thrown back, and the long line of his throat was practically like a siren call.

“Yes,” Spencer gasped. “Please.”

Ashton's chest squeezed tight, his dick giving a distinct throb to remind him that he still wasn't being touched, but he didn't care because Spencer had said “please” with a little crack right in the middle of the word. He couldn't help but give him a firmer, faster stroke as a reward, the head of Spencer's dick popping in and out of the tight ring of his fingers, catching on the stretch of skin between his thumb and his palm. His cock was hot, filling up more with every pump of Ashton's hand, but Ashton didn't want him to come yet, so he slowed down, bending to lick up the side of Spencer's neck and nip his way back down.

He sucked a red mark right where Spencer's throat curved into his shoulder, leaving the skin slick and hot against his lips. He kissed it softly when he was done and twisted his wrist, watching the side of Spencer's face to see the touch come out in the squirm of his expression.

“Can I bite?” Ashton asked.

“Yes.”

Ashton sank his teeth into the mark he'd already made, some animal part of him clamping down hard, and Spencer went rigid beneath him, his dick kicking in Ashton's grip, a strangled noise hissing out of his mouth. Ashton worked his jaw back and forth, tugging at the skin, and rubbed his palm over the head of Spencer's cock, wanking him tight and fast over the top few inches.

“Fuck,” Spencer spat out. “Fuck, jesus—”

He was shaking, the whole bed juddering underneath them from the force of one of Spencer's legs kicking out against the sheets like he was trying to run, to get away. Ashton held him down with his knees pinning him in and one hand curled around the straining curve of his arm. When he pulled away from Spencer's shoulder his own mouth felt abused, overtaxed, and he could see the outline of his teeth in Spencer's skin, the mark turned a deep, harsh red that said it would be there for days.

He took his hand off of Spencer's cock and Spencer whined, thin and broken.

“You okay?” Ashton said.

“Shut up,” Spencer panted. “You talk so much, shut up, just, just—”

“Fuck you?” Ashton supplied, grinning.

Spencer opened his eyes, flicking them up to meet Ashton's gaze and then looking away just as quick. He didn't answer.

Ashton wanted to look at him a moment longer, get him to smile back somehow, but the set of his shoulders had turned defensive, his bicep flexing lightly against the curl of Ashton's fingers. So instead he let go of Spencer's arm and reached down, tugging the towel out from under him and tossing it off the side of the bed.

Spencer's prick curved up flushed and hard, sweetly pink at the tip, and Ashton reached down to rub his palm up the side of it, pressing it down against Spencer's shivering stomach.

“I'm gonna get my fingers in you,” he said softly. “Gonna do that first, and then I'm gonna fuck you.”

Spencer's face twisted, crumpling like he was going to cry, and his cock throbbed against Ashton's hand. Ashton slid his other hand down his his own body, giving his neglected prick a bit of a fondle to reassure himself that he was going to get there eventually. Spencer watched his hand, his eyes wide, and Ashton had to tip himself forward and kiss him again just to wipe the expression off his face.

The kissing was easy now, their mouths slipping together like they'd had years to get used to each other and not just half an hour, and Ashton could feel the tension easing out of Spencer with every swipe of tongue. He reached out blindly for the nightstand, the back of his hand hitting the bottle there before he was able to get a grip on it.

“Do you want to be on your back or your front?” he breathed out against Spencer's cheek, pulling the bottle to him and setting it on the bed beside Spencer's hip.

“What?” Spencer murmured, turning mindlessly to chase Ashton's lips.

Ashton let him catch them, let himself be pulled back into the wet heat of Spencer's mouth. Spencer's hands came up, one tentatively twisting into Ashton's hair, his thumb stroking along the curve of Ashton's ear in a way that felt weirdly nice. The other hand moved to cup the back of Ashton's neck, hovering there for a second like a swimmer at the edge of the diving board before sliding down his spine to the small of his back, fast, like that way Ashton might not notice. His palm sat warm and firm against Ashton's back, fingers pressing hesitantly into the skin, and maybe Ashton had been waiting so long to be touched that he couldn't help it, pulsing his hips down into Spencer's thigh.

Their mouths broke apart, Ashton pulling away to gasp and Spencer falling back against the pillow. Having something solid against his dick felt too good for him to process for a minute, and he let himself finally fall down onto Spencer fully, pressing their skin together from shoulders to hips. He fit his face into Spencer's neck, groaning at the tacky drag of Spencer's skin rubbing against his own, the feel of his leg firm against Ashton's heavy prick. Spencer felt so small underneath him, all tucked in waist and skinny legs and Ashton wanted to lay like this forever, covering him completely.

It took him longer than it should have to realize that Spencer was still beneath him, frozen. Ashton paused, dread creeping in, and levered himself off of the kid as fast as he could. Spencer's eyes were closed, his head tipped to the side, chest moving quick and shallow, like a trapped animal.

“You okay?” Ashton asked. He could feel Spencer's cock poking into his stomach, definitely still hard, precome smearing all over Ashton's skin.

“I'm fine,” Spencer said. He didn't open his eyes. His hips pushed up once, slow and involuntary, riding into the swell of Ashton's cock. “You're just really—can you—can you just get to the—”

He cut off, biting down on his bottom lip and sucking it into his mouth.

“Sorry,” Ashton said. He sat back on his heels and something in Spencer both relaxed and deflated as soon as they were no longer touching everywhere. The light in the room had moved since they started, and the whole bed was in shadow, Spencer's body painted in deepening shades of blue. Something had shifted and Ashton felt like he'd somehow let Spencer down, dropped a precious object he didn't know he'd been handed, hit a baseball through a glass door, and now he had to scramble to pick up the pieces. “Was I too heavy? I know I've got weird ribs, my ex always used to say they felt uncomfortable if I was on top of him.”

Spencer's eyes flicked to him.

“Ex...boyfriend?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” Ashton said shortly. He wasn't here to talk about Evan, and he felt stupid for bringing it up. He might as well have put a neon sign over his head saying, 'I'm fucking you to try and get over an asshole from a month ago, hope you have a good time'. He grabbed the lube and focused back on the issue at hand. “Wanna be on your back then?”

Spencer hesitated.

“I guess?” he said.

“Works for me.” Ashton scooted himself backwards, moving his knees over Spencer's thighs so he was in between his legs instead of straddling him. “Can you pull your legs up a bit?”

Spencer had been sporting a permanent blush for at least the last ten minutes, but his cheeks somehow seemed to burn even darker at that. He drew one skinny leg up on the bed, planting his foot and slowly bending his knee, opening himself up to Ashton's eyes. The room felt weirdly, deliberately quiet, the sound of Spencer's body shifting on the sheets rasping out loud and obnoxious, and Ashton wished he could say something stupid and get Spencer to laugh, break through the air and make it warm.

He curled his fingers around the side of Spencer's other knee, feeling the tense string of muscle connecting his thigh and his calf, and he squeezed slightly. Spencer's skin jumped under his touch, twitchy.

“Come on,” Ashton said gently. “This leg too.”

Spencer's stomach sucked in, his ribs standing out like piano keys on his skin, and for a split second Ashton was sure that Spencer was going to kick him, was going to say that this was a mistake and ask him to leave. But then he was exhaling in a sudden rush, bringing his hands up to press his knuckles against his closed eyes, and he was shaking off Ashton's grip, jerkily yanking his knee up.

Ashton stared at him, spread out and waiting.

Ashton was used to comforting by touch. He hugged people when they were sad, cuddled his brother if something made him cry, let his sister curl up into him on the couch when someone had been shitty to her at school. Spencer was naked and hard and asking for Ashton to do something for him, but suddenly all Ashton could see was that he was shaking, and he was so small, and Ashton didn't know what to do if Spencer was afraid of his touch.

“We don't have to do this,” Ashton said. He couldn't help reaching out to hold onto Spencer's ankle, feeling the delicate bones shift under the skin. Maybe he needed just to ground himself a little. “It's okay if you tell me you don't want to.”

Spencer pulled his hands from his eyes and struggled up onto his elbows, shaking his head viciously.

“No!” he said, and god, Ashton had done it again, had said exactly the wrong thing. “Sorry if I did something wrong, but I want you to—I need this, I need to know.”

Something clicked in Ashton's head, and he stared at the bruise he'd made on Spencer's neck, remembering how Spencer hadn't seemed to know what his tongue should do in a kiss, remembering the shocked way he reacted to everything Ashton did. It seemed obvious, ridiculously so now that he'd realized, and a nauseous mix of guilt and protectiveness swirled in his gut.

“Are you sure?” Ashton asked.

Spencer closed his eyes, and this time Ashton didn't see it as him pulling away, but just as him protecting himself. His cock had gone a little soft, and it looked sweet and vulnerable resting damp against his hip.

“Please,” he whispered, sharp and small, striking like a needle into Ashton's chest. “Please, please—”

Something warm rushed up through Ashton's body, and he tipped forward and kissed Spencer, swallowing down his words. Spencer kissed back hard, his hands clutching at Ashton's back, pulling him in like he needed Ashton to sink them together forever. Ashton slid his mouth to Spencer's cheek, dropping little kisses all over his face, his forehead, his nose, the hot, stressed creases of his eyelids.

“Okay,” he whispered. “I got you, it'll be good, I promise. You didn't do anything wrong, you've been perfect.”

Spencer shuddered, arms clamping harder around Ashton's sides, and Ashton reached between them to wrap his fingers around Spencer's cock, stroking him until he was thick and eager in Ashton's hand again. He let go and braced himself above Spencer with both arms, pulling his head back just enough so he could meet Spencer's wild eyes before he settled himself between his thighs, pushing his own hips forward so their cocks slid together. Spencer gasped, but this time he didn't lock up; he melted, his legs spreading wider to accept Ashton, hands pressing at Ashton's back, urging him to move harder against him. Ashton could feel the heat of Spencer's dick where it bumped against his own, burning hot even through his boxers, and for a second he thought that maybe they could just do this, rub against each other until they burst.

He pressed his mouth to Spencer's, sucking his bottom lip between his own and then letting it snap back.

“Can I—?”

“Yes.”

Ashton sat back again, fumbling with the bottle of lube. One of Spencer's legs was shaking, like all the nervous energy in his entire body had gone there, but he was watching Ashton without looking away. Ashton could feel the weight of his own promise to make this good balancing on his shoulders and he accidentally squeezed out too much lube into his right hand, dripping some onto the bed.

“Ah, fuck, sorry,” he said.

To his surprise, Spencer laughed. It was really more of a sharp exhale, but just the sound of it loosened something in Ashton's shoulders that he hadn't even known had been tight. He'd always liked laughing during sex, even though it hadn't really gone over well in the past; the last time he'd done this, before Evan had decided that cheating seemed like a better option than trying to fix a relationship, he'd gotten three fingers deep in his boyfriend's ass and then gotten kneed in the face when he hit his prostate. Ashton had laughed and Evan had gotten mad at him for “making me knee you”. Honestly, it had been for the best that that ended.

“It's okay,” Spencer said. “I'm gonna have to wash these sheets tomorrow anyway.” There was a little nervous smile playing around the corner of his mouth, like it was waiting for Ashton's reaction to decide if it could burst forth.

“Oh?” Ashton said, spreading the lube around his fingers, warming it up. “You've got some fun plans tonight?”

The grin that Ashton got for that was worth all the confusion of the minutes before, was worth him worrying that Spencer didn't really want this: it pushed up Spencer's cheeks and turned his eyes to crescent squints. He tipped his head to the side and hid half of his face in his shoulder, unbearably cute.

“Maybe,” Spencer said.

His leg hadn't stopped shaking, but he was smiling.

“Sure you don't want me to clear out?” Ashton asked, bending forward until his shoulders knocked into the insides of Spencer's knees. He placed his dry hand carefully on the bottom of Spencer's thigh, right where his leg started to curve out into the swell of his ass. “I mean, I don't want to get in your way.”

Spencer opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a tiny, strangled noise. Ashton could see the muscles in his thighs tensing and relaxing, his whole body in flux, and he slid his hand along Spencer's ass to the crease, digging his thumb in and pulling him apart.

“No,” Spencer said abruptly. His eyes were wide, staring up at the ceiling. “No, you're good.”

There was no comparing him to Evan—even Spencer hiding was more open than Evan had ever been with Ashton, and he couldn't help the ridiculous swell of fondness in his chest.

“You're the one who's good,” he said. “So good for me.”

He spent a moment just stroking his thumb over the dry clench of Spencer's hole, getting him used to the idea of being touched there, and slowly he felt it soften under his touch, giving slightly when he pressed at the centre. Spencer's hands lay limp on his own stomach, curling into fists and then slowly uncurling with every shift of Ashton's hand. He seemed like he was in a trance, and Ashton could understand that—he could barely look away from the pattern he was tracing back and forth on Spencer's skin, from the way Spencer's body was relaxing into it, pink and touchable.

Ashton pressed a wet finger to Spencer's rim, hooking just barely inside, and Spencer jolted, a little hiccupy gasp stuttering out of his mouth. When Ashton started feeding his finger in, sliding slick and easy, Spencer's hands flew up to his face, pressing down on his flushed cheeks like he didn't know what to do with himself.

“Okay?” Ashton asked, thrusting his finger slowly in to the knuckle. He could barely think about anything beyond how fucking hard he was—Spencer was so tight and warm inside, clenching confusedly around the intrusion, and Ashton couldn't breathe with how much he wanted to feel that around his dick. He felt like he'd been wearing these damn boxers for his entire life. He practically couldn't remember how it felt to have his cock not straining against the fabric, trapped and uncomfortable.

Spencer was starting to sweat, traces of it gleaming in the centre of his chest and the shadow of his armpits. He was breathing like he was running a marathon and Ashton could see white spots of pressure around each finger grasping at his red cheeks.

“Okay?” Ashton repeated.

“Yes,” Spencer blurted. “Yes, it's just, it's weird, it's—ohhh.”

His sentence trailed off in a sigh as Ashton tucked another finger in beside the first, worming it slowly inside. It was easier than the first, bizarrely, like Spencer's body knew to be loose for it, and when Ashton stopped moving his hand Spencer's hips bucked down instinctively, searching for the motion.

“You like this, don't you?” Ashton said softly. He didn't really mean to speak, knew that Spencer would get more flustered hearing it, but he couldn't believe he was getting to see this, see Spencer squirm with how much he wanted fingers in his ass. “You're doing so well. You're lovely, you're so lovely.”

Spencer slapped one hand down on the sheets, grabbing a frantic handful, and he shoved the other over his own mouth, biting down on a finger like he could keep down the tiny sounds breaking loose from his throat that way. Ashton's mouth was dry but he couldn't stop licking his lips anyway, compulsively. He started moving his fingers apart, trying to stretch Spencer, get him properly ready.

His fingers curled slightly, searching, and it only took a few more pushes in for him to graze it.

“Fuck,” Spencer spat, his hand jerking out of his mouth, falling spit sticky onto his neck. His whole body shuddered, his legs clamping tight around Ashton's shoulders, his dick twitching hard. “What the fuck.”

“So fucking lovely,” Ashton mumbled, barely even knowing what he was saying. He slid his fingers out until just the tips were still inside, then surged them back in, pressing unerringly against the same spot. Spencer cried out again, high and thin, and a blurt of precome squeezed out of his cock, dripping sluggishly down onto his shaking stomach.

Ashton really started fucking him with his fingers then, his hand moving automatically, eyes flicking from Spencer's open mouth to his dick straining off of his tummy to the stretched, wet rim of his hole letting Ashton's red knuckles pop in and out. Part of him wanted to see if Spencer could come like this, just on his fingers, but he was too fucking selfish, too impatient to get inside him. Maybe next time, he thought, and the hope of that idea—that there could be a next time—made him giddy, made him press a kiss to the side of Spencer's knee.

“Do you want me to fuck you now?” he asked. His voice sounded like he'd been screaming for hours, rough and low. “Can I fuck you?”

Spencer closed his eyes and nodded.

Ashton kept his fingers deep, pressing the heel of his hand just underneath Spencer's balls and moving his fingers inside Spencer in fast, tiny thrusts as he leaned over and made a grab for the condoms on the bedside table. He tried to get one and ended up with about eight—apparently it hadn't been a pile of condoms, as he'd thought originally, but a whole string of attached ones.

“How many rounds did you think we were gonna be able to go?” he asked, sitting back and tearing one packet off with his teeth.

“I dunno,” Spencer gasped, and his hands were over his face again, his words muffled into his wrists. “Please, just, shut up, just—”

Ashton had to use both hands to get the condom on, and Spencer made a tiny noise of discomfort when he pulled his fingers out.

“Hey, I got you,” Ashton soothed. “Gonna fill you up soon.”

It had been easier somehow to be calm when Ashton had to focus on making things okay for Spencer, but now that he was about to touch himself, about to really do this, his hands were shaking, sticky fingers skating uselessly on the condom wrapper. He dropped it after a moment, feeling ridiculously selfconscious—as if Spencer was evaluating his performance—and instead started trying to shove his boxers down. He couldn't even do that right; the waistband caught and stretched over the awkward shape of his cock and he had to wrestle stupidly with the fabric for a second before he got it off, his dick slapping up against his stomach almost painfully. Ashton shot a look up at Spencer, hoping his eyes were closed, but he was watching through the spaces in his fingers, his gaze fixed on Ashton's dick. Something in Ashton's chest clenched up small and tight—something like the memory of his own first time, an older boy looking down between his legs and sneering—and he looked away, sliding his boxers off completely.

He balled them up in his hands and watched himself slowly wipe his fingers clean. He knew his cock was sticking out in front of him, knew it looked kind of dumb when it was hard, too red, too eager—he'd been told it enough times to know it was true. But it wouldn't matter in a minute as long as he could make Spencer feel good. This was about Spencer, not Ashton, and so he tucked the uneasy, messy feeling back into it's box in the back of his mind and tossed his boxers to the floor.

The condom wrapper opened easily once his hands were dry, and he rolled it carefully down over his cock.

“Are you comfortable like this?” he asked, pouring some more lube out into his hand. “Like, on your back? It might be easier on your knees.”

He hissed out a breath at the first touch of his wet hand to his cock, but didn't let himself linger, stroking fast and careful to get himself slick. Spencer was watching, his mouth slack and his hands sliding away from his face to rest on the pillow on either side of his head. He looked like he hadn't heard the question, and Ashton was about to repeat it when he spoke.

“No,” he said quietly. “I need to be able to—to see—”

He cut off, turning his head and rubbing his flushed cheek into the pillow, but Ashton could hear the end of the sentence as clearly as if he'd said it.

Ashton nodded, his heart going double time in his chest. He took a deep breath and shuffled forward on his knees until he was right where he needed to be, his dick smearing against the curve of Spencer's ass. Spencer's thighs were shaking around him, and when he reached down and guided his cock to snub up against Spencer's hole properly, he could hear the kid take a deep, rattling breath.

Ashton stopped.

“Hey,” he said softly. He slid his hand onto Spencer's hip, stroking his thumb back and forth. “I know we don't know anything about each other. I know we only just met, and I know this is weird. But you can trust me, okay? It'll be fine.”

When a reply came, after a long moment of unsteady breathing, it was small, but clear.

“Okay.”

Ashton tightened his grip on Spencer's hip and started pushing forward. It took a bit of pressure before the sticky head of his dick could catch on the rim, forcing it to spread, but when it did Spencer's body seemed to just open up for him, letting him sink in slow and smooth. Ashton's pulse was drumbeat loud in his head, and Spencer wasn't making a sound. His hands were covering his entire face again, hiding, but his legs were spreading wider, letting Ashton fuck into him, inch by inch. Spencer felt somehow both exactly the same around Ashton's dick as he had his fingers and yet completely different; it was slick and hot and tight, Spencer squeezing spasmodically around him until Ashton felt like everything in him was centred on where his body joined Spencer's, both of them shaking together like two matching pieces of a bomb on the verge of explosion. He was suddenly hyperaware of his entire body, of the sweat dripping down his back, of the cramp of his fingers at Spencer's hip, of the swollen weight of his balls nudging against the insides of his thighs.

Ashton paused when he bottomed out, hunching forward over Spencer, and that's when he heard it.

Spencer wasn't being silent; his hands were trembling over his face and he was making tiny hiccuping noises, his chest jumping in little restrained jerks, like he was trying so hard to keep it in. It was ice water over Ashton's head, shocking him out of himself, and he reached up and took Spencer's wrists, drawing his hands away. His eyes were wet. He was crying.

“Oh,” Ashton said, and it was like getting punched in the stomach. “Spencer, shit, are you okay? Am I hurting you? Spencer?”

Spencer stared up at him, his eyes glossy and dazed, expression smashed wide open. He took a deep breath, his hands hanging limp in Ashton's grip.

“My—my name is Calum,” he said faintly.

Something lit up in Ashton's head, some strange sort of recognition. Of course that was his real name, of course.

“Calum,” he said. “Calum, I—”

“And no,” Calum whispered. “You're not hurting me.”

It wasn't what Ashton had thought he'd say—he drew back slightly in surprise, and the movement shifted his dick inside Spe—Calum, a tiny drag of sensation. Calum gasped, eyebrows pinching together.

“It's just—different,” Calum said. “Please, just—”

Ashton kissed the failing words out of his mouth and braced himself on his elbows above him, easing his hips back, and then slowly thrusting forward. Calum's eyes blew wide and frantic, a high, surprised moan leaking out of his mouth. Ashton paused, waiting, trembling with the effort of holding back, of not just fucking into Calum hard, like he desperately wanted to. His body felt like a coiled spring, but he needed to know Calum was okay more than he needed to come.

“Oh,” Calum sighed. He wasn't looking at Ashton anymore, staring off past his shoulder. His face twisted, collapsing in on itself. “I...I think I like it.”

And Ashton remembered being called a fag when he was twelve, remembered kissing a boy and pushing him away, so scared, and he got it then, knew why Calum was crying.

“That's a good thing,” he said fiercely, putting his hand on Calum's cheek and turning his head so he had to meet his eyes. “It's okay to like it, it's good.”

He started rocking his hips back and forth, as slowly as he could make himself do it, building the pace until something in Calum seemed to let go, his body going pliant underneath Ashton, his eyes flashing out like opening doors to the morning light. Ashton kissed him hard, one sweet press of lips, and sat back, hands sliding around Calum's hips to pull him down onto his cock harder. When he found the right angle Calum choked out a moan, his back arching up off the bed.

“Yeah?” Ashton panted. Even with his eyes red and his cheeks streaked with tears, Calum was beautiful, all long lines and limbs, straining confusedly against the sheets. Calum bit his lip and nodded, and Ashton looked down to where they were joined, to where his dick was sliding slick into the stressed, red stretch of Calum's hole. He wanted to pound in hard; he wanted to ruin him, and just acknowledging the thought made it twist over soft and sweet in his head, made him certain that he had to make this good for Calum.

Calum had stayed hard even through the first push, and his cock was leaking all over his stomach, slapping lightly up and down with every shove of Ashton's hips. He was sloppy wet, worked up from the back and forth of the on and off of everything that had happened since they first kissed. Ashton wrapped his fingers around the throb of Calum's prick and started pulling him off, letting his own thrusts push Calum's cock up into his fist, wet and loud.

“Fuck,” Calum hissed. His hands were pressed flat to the sheets on either side of his body, making shadowed dents in the bed, bracing himself so he could push back onto Ashton's cock. “Fuck, please.”

“That's it.” Ashton dug his fingers into Calum's thigh, and pushed it back towards his chest, opening him up so he could screw in faster, knock more of those hurt noises out of him. “Just like that, Calum.”

Calum's voice hitched, breaking clean down the middle of the moan, tears sliding down the side of his face.

“You like it if I say your name?”

“Yes,” Calum breathed, eyes wide. There was no hesitation in the word, no fear anymore, like Calum had finally been pushed past the point of registering anything like embarrassment, and Ashton felt the relief of that thought ripple through his whole body.

“Calum,” he said. “Calum, Calum, you're so lovely, Calum, you're so good, you feel so good—”

He couldn't stop saying his name, over and over again, stupid with the sound of it in his mouth. He was going to come soon—could feel it building hot and sudden in his gut, and he wanted more than anything for Calum to be there with him.

He tilted Calum's hips up so he could push down into him, grinding in deep, and he bent forward over him, searching for his mouth. Calum's legs slipped around his waist, squeezing so hard Ashton could barely move, and he grabbed at Ashton's face, sinking his fingers into his hair and meeting him for a kiss. Ashton was still mumbling Calum's name, and Calum kept pulling away to breath, and it turned into just their lips catching, dragging lightly over each other every time Calum's body was pushed into the mattress, every time Ashton rocked forward above him. Ashton's hand was cramped between them, rhythm forgotten, rubbing fast over the slick head of Calum's dick. He was so close to Calum's face that he could see the spiky wet splay of his eyelashes on his cheeks, so close to coming that he could barely breath with it. Calum was crying harder than ever, noises dying a strangled death in the back of his throat, his face tacky with tear marks.

“I think—I think I'm—” he said, panic rearing again in his eyes.

“Please,” Ashton choked out. “Come on, Calum.”

He shifted his head, pressed his lips as gently as he could to Calum's hot cheek, and Calum bucked underneath him, drawing in one great, shuddery inhale before he was coming, silent and astonished. His cock jerked hard in Ashton's hand, come smearing out thick over his fingers, and Ashton wanted to watch his face, wanted to see every second of it, but Calum was clenching around him and he couldn't take it anymore; he twisted his face into Calum's shoulder, mindlessly biting down, and rutted into Calum as hard as he could. It was only a second more before he was coming as well, a wave of heat washing fever-like through his body, his dick twitching and shooting off safe in the clutch of Calum's body.

He fucked Calum through it, thrusting slow and easy, until they were both oversensitive, shaking with every move. His arms burned from holding Calum up, and something in his jaw was clicking strangely when he finally pulled away from Calum's shoulder. Calum looked exactly like what the term fucked-out implied—he was red all over, his legs sliding limply off of Ashton's back, his swollen mouth hanging slackly open. He was breathing in great gasps, chest rising and falling like he'd just almost drowned, and he was staring up at the ceiling with glassy eyes.

Ashton pressed a kiss to the new bite mark he'd made on Calum's shoulder. He wanted to collapse on Calum and sleep, wanted to sink into him and let the liquid relief of coming take over his entire body.

“Calum,” he said. “Calum, I've gotta pull out, it's gonna be a little uncomfortable, okay?”

He waited a moment until Calum seemed to register his words, nodding slowly, his face pinching. Then Ashton pushed himself up on unsteady arms, easing his hips back until his cock slid out of Calum's ass with a gross slurk of lube, flopping soft and wet against his thigh. Calum sighed, settling his body more comfortably against the sheets, and Ashton sat back and took a moment just to look at him, the long stretch of him, skinny and sated and sweet.

“I'll be right back,” he said.

It took only a couple minutes for Ashton to clean up, peeling the used condom off and throwing it in the garbage, staggering across the hall to the bathroom to get a clean flannel and then staggering back to wipe Calum off, careful over the sensitive crease of his ass. As soon as he was finished, chucking the flannel onto the bedside table, Calum was making grabby hands at him and pulling him down into his arms.

They lay there kissing for a long time, until Ashton's lips felt numb and thick, and yet he couldn't make himself stop. He could hear the chords for the final chorus starting up in the back of his head, could hear a voice warning him it was last call, could hear the sound of water gurgling down a drain; the sound of an ending. He wanted to stay here, in this moment, so badly that he felt frantic with it, moreso than he'd felt the entire time they'd had sex.

The panic crested when Calum pulled away from the kiss, and then crashed back down when he snuggled further into Ashton's arms, laying his head on his chest.

“Was that all okay?” Ashton asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” Calum mumbled. “Thank you.”

Ashton laughed, surprised.

“You don't have to say thank you,” he said. “I'm pretty sure I liked that too.”

“Pretty sure,” Calum said dryly. Ashton couldn't see his face, but he was almost certain that he was smiling. “Wow, I feel really good about myself right now.”

“Maybe 'pretty sure' is code for 'that was fucking awesome',” Ashton said. “And I just didn't want to sound like I was bragging.”

There was definitely a smile in Calum's voice when he responded.

“Bragging? To who? I'm the only person here.”

“I can brag to you if I want,” Ashton said. “You should be bragging to me too. We should be congratulating each other. Here, give me a high five.”

Calum did, his hand slapping halfheartedly against Ashton's.

“Success,” he laughed. “Gay sex. Gay sex success. It's a tonguetwister.”

Ashton pressed his mouth to Calum's ear and whispered “gay sex success” over and over until Calum was giggling and squirming in his arms.

“You've ruined it,” he said. “It sounds stupid if you say it, shut up.”

Ashton hid his grin in Calum's hair and held him tighter.

“It...was good though, right?” he asked. “You got what you needed from it?”

This time Calum paused for a moment, like he was turning the question over in his head, really thinking about it.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “And I'm glad it was you.”

Ashton had to clear his throat before he could speak, feeling suddenly—stupidly—emotional.

“Good.”

There was a long pause. Ashton lay a hand on Calum's head, carding his fingers slowly through his hair.

“You won't tell anyone, right?” Calum said, sounding smaller than he had the whole day. Ashton's hand stilled in it's pattern, and he stared down at the kid on his chest, feeling a sudden, thick, visceral sadness.

“Of course I won't,” Ashton said. “Not like I know anyone you do. There'd be no one to tell.” He deliberately lightened his voice, trying to pull them away from the dark pit in Calum and back towards the warmth of afterglow. “Don't want to exactly broadcast that I had to go to craigslist to find someone willing to put up with me anyway.”

“Why did you answer my ad?” Calum asked. “Why were you on there in the first place? You said you haven't done this a lot.”

“Ever,” Ashton corrected. “I—I haven't ever done this. I was just on there because I was curious. And then I saw yours. And you said you were sixteen, and I—I got worried.” He shrugged, feeling dumb just saying it. “I got worried that you'd get tricked by some creepy fifty year old guy. So I answered, just to start a conversation. And you sent me a picture, and then—then I wanted you. There aren't a lot of guys I can hook up with at my high school, and it's been a month since I broke up with my last boyfriend, so, yeah.”

“That's so noble,” Calum said dramatically. “You were so hot for my bod that you had to protect me. Kind of dumb though; what if I'd been a fifty year old guy trying to trick you?”

“I could've fought you off if you were,” Ashton said, flexing his arm obnoxiously in Calum's face. “Look at this raw muscle.”

“Gross,” Calum exclaimed, smiling so wide that Ashton could see the bump of his cheek when he looked down. “Worse than a fifty year old man, that is.”

Ashton made a small, offended noise, and Calum laughed at him.

“I wanted you to be happy about it after,” Ashton said softly. “I wanted you to be able to say 'I'm glad it was you'.”

Calum was silent.

“Not that I think I'm so good that obviously you would have a good time,” Ashton said, backtracking idiotically. “Or that only fifty year old men were the other people on craigslist who might have seen your ad, I just knew that I'd try for you, as hard as I could.”

“Are you staying the night?” Calum asked abruptly.

“Yes,” Ashton said. “I mean, if you want me to, yes. I made plans for staying overnight, but I can also leave if that's what you want.”

Calum laid a hand on Ashton's chest, tracing his thumb carelessly over his nipple. Ashton shuddered and Calum's hand stilled.

“I want you to stay.”

The room was dark, and even with only the sheets over them Ashton felt warm and safe, like they were suspended together in their own little world, small and made just for them. There was a wild, uncontrollable happiness in his chest, swelling like a hot air balloon with every second. He tried to remember a moment when he'd felt like this with Evan, but all he got was a handful of empty memories, painted bright but with nothing in them.

He sank into the pillow, letting the tiredness pull at the back of his mind, his eyes slipping closed.

“I can make you breakfast. Do you have pancake mix? I make pretty great pancakes.”

“We have pancake mix.”

“So you want me to make you breakfast?”

“You offered.”

“I'll make you breakfast.”

There was a short silence. Calum's weight was starting to border on uncomfortable, but Ashton desperately didn't want him to move, so he stayed as still as possible.

“Tell me something about you,” Calum said.

“I like boys named Calum,” Ashton mumbled.

“Shut up,” Calum said, pleased, flicking Ashton's chest. “Something actually about you. Like...do you have any siblings? I've got a sister. Older than me.”

“What's her name?”

“Mali.”

“I've got a sister as well, but she's younger. Her name's Lauren. And I've a kid brother, Harry. They're pretty cool. I love my family a lot.”

“Me too, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well, obviously I love them, I just don't think about it a lot.”

“Like it's automatic, yeah.”

Calum yawned, his mouth stretching wide and a rush of hot air gusting out over Ashton's chest. Ashton wanted to ask if Calum thought his family would be cool with this, with the thought of Calum with a guy the way they were now, but he didn't want to make Calum think about that, not when he was so warm and soft in Ashton's arms.

“What's your favourite band?” he asked instead.

“Green Day, probably,” Calum said. “I've got a burned copy of American Idiot, it's sick.”

“Yeah, that's a pretty cool album,” Ashton said, feeling stupidly excited that Calum maybe liked the kind of stuff he did. “Friend of mine went to a show of theirs once—he said they were really awesome live.”

“I'm gonna be like them one day,” Calum said softly. “I'm gonna play shows and be famous.”

“Really?”

“Maybe. I dunno, it's stupid, I guess.”

“No, it's not,” Ashton said, as fierce as he could. “It's fucking great, I—me too. To have people come to see you play shows and sing your lyrics back or whatever, just—it sounds amazing. It's not stupid.”

“Maybe we could be a duo,” Calum said. “Rock stars together. I'd have to ditch my friends though.”

“Fuck your friends,” Ashton muttered, and Calum giggled, the vibrations of it shaking down through Ashton's ribcage, rattling his heart around fitfully.

“Yeah, fuck 'em,” Calum said. “You and me.”

“You and me.”

When they fell asleep, in between one sentence and the next, Calum was still cuddled right up next to Ashton, his hand splayed out over his heart.

****

The shift from sleep to awakeness was so gradual Calum didn't know when he tipped over from one to the other; the world slowly widened from the muddy, indistinct waters of a dream to the absolute darkness of the room, the crisp feel of air on his skin, the warmth of something blanketing his legs, and then—then it was all contracting down to the soft press of kisses on the inside of his thigh. Heat stirred in his gut like molten lava under the earth, slow and inexorable. He could feel his cock lying thick on his stomach, ready, and he didn't know he was sighing until he heard it dissipating into the air around them.

The kisses stopped, and Calum thought he heard his own name breathed out against his tummy, and then there was a wet heat sliding down his cock in one smooth motion, taking him deep. He cried out and bucked up, but there were hands at his hips holding him down and a tongue working along the underside of his dick, the tight seal of a mouth moving up and down. Calum felt like he was floating, like he was still dreaming—his hands found Jake's head and tangled in his hair, needing to ground himself somehow.

It was over fast, Calum's dick kicking and unloading against Jake's tongue. Jake didn't move back, just sucked hard on the head, teasing out every last bit of come until Calum felt wrung out and sensitive, whining high in the back of his throat. His hands fell back to the sheets and Jake pulled off, swallowing audibly.

He wanted to say something, to reach out and reciprocate, but Jake was already crawling back up the bed and settling down next to him again, snuggling in as if he didn't need anything else, even though Calum could feel his dick pressing hard against his thigh.

Calum mumbled something, hand flopping over onto Jake's hip in a half-hearted attempt to reach for his cock, but Jake just pressed a kiss to his cheek and shushed him. His arm rested warm and comforting on Calum's stomach, stroking slowly back and forth, and Calum slipped back into sleep like he'd never left it.

If Jake whispered something to him a minute later, something about a name, Calum didn't hear it.

****

The morning came soft and warm on Ashton's cheeks, pulling him to the surface of consciousness like the brush of a hand on his skin. There was a glow in the room when he opened his eyes, a ripe sort of golden light spilling in through the curtains and settling in a haze on the walls and floors, on the rise of Calum's legs under the sheets.

Calum was asleep beside him; he'd shifted slightly away in the night but was still turned towards Ashton, one hand resting against Ashton's ribcage. Ashton lay there for a long moment, just looking at him. He was incredibly soft in sleep, and the light sat in thick, luminescent stripes on the curve of his cheek, the lush spread of his mouth. Ashton looked at him, feeling happy in a completely nonsensical, groundless sort of way, until he could pull himself away, slipping carefully out of the bed so he didn't wake Calum up.

Before they'd fallen asleep, Calum had told him that he could use his shower and stuff in the morning, and Ashton headed across the hall to the bathroom, wanting to be as fast as possible so he could get started on breakfast. He felt weirdly awake for someone who had woken up in the middle of the night to suck a boy off—he fancied that he could still feel the weight of Calum on his tongue, could definitely still remember how it felt to wake up confused where he was and go nuts needing to touch Calum as soon as he realized. Thinking about it made him feel hot all over, anticipation soaring in his gut, and he pushed it down, turning the shower on. There would be time for that later. Hopefully many times for that. Hopefully a phone call tomorrow. Hopefully dating. He'd told Calum his real name last night, whispered it against his ear, but he didn't know if Calum had heard him or not, he was so close to the edge of sleep. It didn't matter either way: they had this morning for him to repeat it if need be.

Ashton had always been a romantic, but this time, for some reason, even though Calum was younger and didn't go to his school and definitely wasn't out, it didn't feel stupid to hope.

He showered quickly, trying not to think about how domestic it felt to be standing in Calum's shower and using his soap and his shampoo. You've only known him for one day, he told himself strictly. But recognizing the smell on his skin still made something jump in his chest.

He'd forgotten to bring his boxers to the bathroom, so he just wrapped the towel around his waist after quickly drying himself off. He looked strange and small in the mirror over the sink, his hair piled in a tangled, wet mess on the top of his head, skin pink all over.

He was just leaning into the mirror, inspecting a patch of rough skin on the bottom of his chin that might have been stubble finally coming in, when he heard movement outside the door.

“Aw, Calum,” he called, crossing quickly to the door. “You were supposed to stay in bed, I promised I'd—”

The words dissolved in his mouth, growing small and cold in seconds, and the world narrowed down to a few indisputable facts. He had one hand on the bathroom door, pushing it open. He had the other on the towel at his waist, keeping it up. There was a dark-haired girl standing at the top of the stairs, a backpack dangling from her hand, her eyes fixed on him in what could only be classified as complete and utter shock.

For a moment they made a strange, solemn tableau, the two of them, frozen in uncertainty, and then the girl dropped her backpack with a hollow thud.

“Who—who are you?” she hissed, one hand clutching at the banister for support. Ashton could see Calum in her face, in the shape of her eyes and the line of her chin and he knew he'd fucked things up more than he'd ever thought he could. “What are you doing in my house?”

Her voice got louder towards the end, climbing to a sharp conclusion, and Ashton lurched forward, taking his hand off the door and holding it out.

“Just—shh,” he said quickly. “You're going to wake him.”

The door to Calum's room was still open, and it was too close to the stairs, too exposed. Ashton watched the girl's eyes flick over, and he could remember what it had looked like when he left for his shower: Calum with the sheets just barely covering his lap, the string of condoms lying like a bright, obvious flag on the floor, his own clothes strewn on the floor next to them. It was as incriminating as if she'd walked in mid-fuck, if less humiliating, and he watched it dawn on her face. Mali—because that was who it was, had to be—raised a hand to her mouth and then pulled it away, looking from the doorway to Ashton and back again.

“Are you his—”

“No,” Ashton said helplessly. “Please, he's only recently figured it out, I don't think he's ready to tell you guys yet—he thought you'd all be gone.”

“I was at a friend's house,” she said softly, looking down at the backpack on the ground beside her as if she didn't know how it had gotten there. “But I thought I'd come back early because Cal's leaving for football camp tomorrow.”

Ashton hadn't even known Calum liked football—of course he hadn't, he knew nothing about him. It was glaringly obvious now how out of place he was, how stupid he'd been to think everything was going to go smoothly just because there weren't any obvious obstacles like family members around.

“I'll go,” he said. “Just let me get dressed and then I'll leave. Please don't wake him, just give me a second to get dressed.”

Calum's sister looked at him for a moment, her gaze level and evaluating. Ashton could feel the prickle of water dripping from his wet hair onto the nape of his neck. God, he looked ridiculous, and he was maybe about to ruin everything for Calum.

“I'll be downstairs,” Mali said finally.

Ashton got dressed at record pace, trying desperately to be quiet so Calum wouldn't wake up. He stirred once, when Ashton tripped pulling his shorts up, and Ashton froze for a long moment as Calum shifted, sheets dragging down with his movement to show off the bare dip of his back. He settled down quickly though, nuzzling his face into the pillow like a puppy, his arm stretched out to the side of the bed where Ashton had been lying only half an hour ago. The desire to hold him was so strong Ashton could feel it in his hands, like there were magnets under his skin straining for Calum, and he wanted to cry with how unfair it was that this morning was taken from them. For a crazy second he thought about just taking it back, climbing back into bed with him, drawing his sleep-warm body into his arms and keeping him there forever so neither of them had to face his sister.

But then he shoved his socks on his feet, checked his pockets to make sure he had everything he needed, and made his way downstairs.

Mali was waiting for him by the kitchen island, leaning her elbows on the counter. When she saw him she straightened up, crossing her arms, and she looked so much like Ashton's mum for a second that he was drawn up short, tripping down the last step like he was three years old again and didn't know how to control his limbs.

“Uh, hi,” he said, coming to an awkward stop in the doorway of the kitchen. “Again.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I'm gonna leave now,” Ashton said, shuffling sideways towards the hallway to the door. He felt like he was in one of those dreams he used to have when he was a kid where the monster stayed safe and unmoving only as long as he faced it; he couldn't turn his back or she would rip him to shreds, maybe screaming something about defiling her brother. “I'm sorry, just please don't ask him about it, or mention that you saw me. He'll tell you when he's ready, but you can't spring it on him.”

He was backing down the hallway now, his shirt dampening at the shoulders where he hadn't quite dried himself properly, clinging to his skin. Calum's sister was still watching him and he couldn't read her face at all.

“And, and, just if you could,” Ashton continued, because clearly he didn't know when to shut his mouth. “Could you make him breakfast? It's just—I promised him—I told him I would make breakfast.”

His foot nudged against what was probably a shoe, and he stopped, unable to make himself bend down and put it on. He wanted to hear her say it, agree to this one thing, just to give him a sign that he wasn't leaving Calum to a family that were going to fuck him over for this.

Mali drummed her fingers on the counter, a quick, staccato rhythm, four fingers three times, like a burst of percussion before the start of a song.

“No,” she said, and Ashton's heart fell down to his socked feet before she continued. “No, I'll do that stuff, I get it, but there is no way you are going to run out on my brother without leaving a note.”

She pointed at the stairs.

“Get up there. And don't wake him.”

****

Ashton wrote it on a piece of paper he found on Calum's desk; there was a drawing in the corner, a stickman skateboarding.

_Calum, I'm sorry. I got a call from my mum in the middle of the night and I had to leave so I could be back home before morning. I'm sorry I couldn't make you breakfast, but if you want, you could call me and I could take you out for breakfast sometime. If you want. I'd really like to see you again._

_I really like you._

He put his phone number at the bottom and left it unsigned. Calum would know who it was from.

He brushed Calum's hair out of his eyes and kissed him on the forehead, lingering so he could remember the feel of his skin against his mouth, in case he never got this again.

He placed the note on Calum's bedside table and went down the stairs, past Calum's sister, and out the door. And he left.

****

When Calum woke for the second time, it was light out, and the bed was empty.

He lay there for a moment, tracing his hand back and forth over the indent Jake's body had left, his mind lost in the sway of the movement, the imagined hint of heat bleeding from the sheets to his palm. He rolled over and pressed his face into the spot on the pillow where Jake's head had been, inhaling deeply. It smelled only of home and his mom's detergent, and he pulled away, swinging his feet over the side of the bed and standing up.

Everything seemed strangely straightforward and hazy in his head, details and worries pushed to the distant edges of his consciousness so that all he could think about was that Jake wasn't there and he wanted to find him. He walked to the door, holding the sheets around his body so that they were slowly pulled away from where they'd been tucked in to the corners of his bed, and he walked out into the hallway with them trailing behind him like a cape.

He could smell something cooking, and he made his way to the stairs, taking the steps fast. It felt like running down at Christmas morning, except he wasn't going to find presents, he was going to find a beautiful boy in his kitchen, one who kissed him and told him he was good, that all of this was good, that it was okay to like this kind of stuff—

He reached the bottom step and came to a jolting halt, his hand clenching hard in the tangle of sheets. Mali was standing near the table, a plate of bacon in her hand. It smelled like it was made a little burnt, just how he liked.

Calum wanted to throw up. The picture he'd had of breakfast with Jake, kissing over pancakes, Jake's hands warm on his back, winked out like someone had flicked the off switch on a particularly stupid and optimistic tv show.

“Mali?” he croaked.

She looked up, smiling as if everything was normal.

“Hey, Cal,” she said. “I got back an hour ago. Surprise! Thought I'd make you some breakfast because you're leaving tomorrow and everything.” She raised an eyebrow, nodding at the sheets he had draped around him. “You gonna get dressed or are you gonna wear that all day?”

There was a buzz in Calum's head, growing louder and louder every second he kept looking at his sister. Heat was rushing sickly and sporadic over his skin, waves of cold following right after. He felt like he was going to have a stroke, like he was going crazy.

He turned and sprinted up the stairs. Mali yelled something after him, but he had no idea what it was—the sheets tangled around his legs, slippery as ice, and he fell a couple times, bashing the heels of his hands catching himself. It wasn't good, he wasn't good, nothing was okay.

He made it to his room and slammed the door behind him, staring around at the mess like he could find something to tell him that he hadn't made it all up, hadn't just invented Jake. His clothes were gone from the floor, but the condoms were still there. The bed looked like it had had two bodies in it, it did, and he could still feel Jake, could feel the ache of him sharp and unexpected in his body. He had been real, and he had said he'd stay, and Calum's family was supposed to be back later, except now it was all flipped and Jake was gone and Mali was here and Calum didn't know what he was supposed to do.

He ripped the sheets off, suddenly not wanting anything to be touching him. They were twisted and he pulled at them, frantic, bunched fabric cutting red lines of stress into his palms before he managed to get them off, kick them away. He scooped up the condoms, rushing to his bedside table and yanking open the drawer. He stuffed them inside, piling everything else in there on top until he couldn't see a hint of the bright colours, and then he reached for the bottle of lube on the bedside table to hide it as well.

That was when he saw the note.

He read it for the first time standing up, morning light filtering in through his curtains to fall softly on the small piece of paper. He read it for the second time sitting down, flopping down heavily on the bed and jolting in terror and remembrance at the sudden throb of pain in his ass. He read it for the third time lying down, spread out sideways with his legs dangling over the edge, rereading the line “I really like you” over and over again.

After the fifth read he put the number in his phone. After the sixth he folded the paper up, again and again until it was so small that it refused to fold anymore, and put it inside the drawer next to the lube. He sat on his bed for a long moment, breathing in and out, trying to stop his hands from shaking.

Jake had left in the night. Mali didn't know. Mali didn't know. Even just admitting in his head that there was something to tell, something new to know, made him want to peel off his skin and run until his legs collapsed beneath him. Everything had seemed so simple last night, with Jake there next to him. But he couldn't. He couldn't.

After a while, he got up and put some clothes on and went downstairs and he ate bacon and talked to Mali and asked about her stay at Jen's and she told him he had to start packing and he ate bacon and laughed at her jokes and she asked when their parents were going to be home and he told her and he ate bacon and he asked which of his lucky jerseys she thought he should bring to Brazil and he ate bacon and he ate bacon and he ate bacon and he didn't wish for the taste of maple syrup and pancakes at all.

****

When Ashton got home he checked his computer and found a friend request waiting for him on facebook. For one dazzling second he thought it was Calum, that he'd heard Ashton whisper his real name and had found him, and the weird swell of hope was dizzying. But instead it was just some swoopy-haired kid named Michael. Ashton had a distant recollection of seeing him at a party, but the shock of familiarity he felt looking at his profile picture didn't match up with one meeting.

He went to Michael's page and one of the first posts was a link to a youtube video.

A minute later and Ashton knew why Calum had been so familiar.

****

It wasn't like the other kids at his football camp were mean or anything. And it wasn't like just being here—in Brazil!—wasn't really cool and stuff. But Calum would be lying if he said he wasn't a little homesick.

The worst part was when everyone else had fallen asleep and he was still awake, staring up into the blackness at the bottom of the bunk above him. They all slept in the same big room and it had only taken a couple of days for it to start smelling like the bottom of a gym bag. It was alright during the day, when everyone was laughing and ribbing each other about how badly they did on the field or talking about home, but at night he missed the dumb things, like his sister's old shampoo in the shower, the smell of his mom's detergent on everything.

Everyone else seemed to find it easy to sleep, but Calum didn't, and the longer he lay awake, the more his stupid head kept wanting to pry open boxes of secret, stupid thoughts.

Thoughts about Jake's smile and shoulders and the way he kissed Calum's cheek when he was crying and Jake was in him.

Everything about that day was somehow too bright for Calum to look at directly. He felt hot and nauseous all over again just imagining the touch of Jake's hands on his stomach. He wanted to suck in his belly and move away from the remembered warmth, wanted to arch up and have it become solid and real again. He wanted to squirm between the two urges until Jake held him down and made him take it.

He rolled over and shoved his face into the pillow until he could feel the grain of the fabric pressing patterns on his mouth.

“I'm gay,” he whispered.

Everyone was asleep and the pillow swallowed the sound, but it didn't stop his spine from locking up. The idea of the word traveled down his body in a shockwave, turning his hands and feet numb, his stomach into a block of cement. It felt for a second like his skin was trying to revolt, trying to peel off of his flesh and go become part of someone else, someone who wasn't as messed up, but it was only a second, one gut-wrenching second. Then the feeling passed, leaving him cold and afraid. It didn't matter that no one had heard him; he was still so, so afraid.

He should never have put up the ad. He should have at least waited, because if he'd waited until things weren't so crazy—what with football and the band having a gig coming up and Michael messaging him to say that they thought they'd found a potential drummer, some guy named Ashton that Calum had totally failed at locating on facebook—then maybe he wouldn't feel like this. Maybe if he had time to sit and think about it, it wouldn't be so bad that he'd liked what he did with Jake.

The bunk above him gave a creak like a door opening, Ben shifting around in his sleep, and Calum froze. He squeezed his eyes shut and rolled onto his back, telling himself over and over that 'he didn't hear you, it was too quiet, he couldn't have heard you, he didn't hear you—'

When he finally slept, he dreamed of being in the dorm with Jake on top of him and his football campmates standing in a circle around the bed, all pointing at him, their mouths moving soundlessly, shaping out one word again and again. He woke up to the taste of bile in the back of his throat and someone yelling at him that he was going to be late for morning practice.

He got up.

****

The facebook message came two weeks after what Ashton was thinking of as “the Calum day”. It sat there in his message inbox, Michael's dumb “pouting while trying to look like you're not pouting” profile picture staring up at him beside the words. Words asking him if he wanted to play a gig with them.

Ashton's hands rested numb and useless on the keyboard. He stared at the screen. Within the last two weeks he'd maybe watched their “5 Seconds of Summer” videos more times than he wanted to admit to his pathetic self, searching for something familiar in the way Calum held a guitar, in the way his face contorted when he sang. And it wasn't like they'd suddenly become a much better band since Ashton fucked one of their members, but maybe because he was looking harder in his rewatches, he saw something he hadn't really seen before. They forgot lyrics. They were sloppy. They didn't seem to care. But they had something, something like 12,000 twitter followers, something like thousands of views on each video. And Ashton wanted something, something more than playing with bands going nowhere or the African drum circles at lunch at school.

He remembered Calum lying weak and fucked-out beneath him, breathing hard, his face streaked with tears. He remembered Calum saying later, “You won't tell anyone, right?” and Ashton replying that of course he wouldn't, who would he tell anyway? It wasn't like they knew the same people.

You can't play with a band you know Calum is in, he told himself. It's not fair that he doesn't know who you are but you know who he is, he'll just feel cornered and afraid, there's no way he would be ready to see you again, he hasn't called—

“Ashton!” Lauren called, her voice echoing up the stairs. “I found the monopoly board, you said you'd play it with me!”

He came back to earth with a jolt, remembering his mom at work, and his siblings downstairs, siblings he was supposed to be babysitting. His fingers twitched, flexed, and then tapped out something on the keyboard.

“Yeah, man. I'd love to!”

He sent it before he could convince himself not to and logged off, exiting out of the whole window for good measure.

Then he ran down the stairs to meet his sister, and didn't think about how much he was fucking everything up for the rest of the day.

****

There was a riff going through Calum's head; the same five notes over and over, jumping and sliding over each other in a pattern. His feet fell into the beat of them as he ran on the pitch, sun pounding against the back of his neck. One, two, three—then quicker—four, five, and repeat. He shaded his eyes with his hand, squinting so he could follow the path of the ball on the other side of the field. His legs felt like tenderized meat, like they had been stretched and molded beyond recognition, and he was sure if he took one more step on them they would give out beneath him. A whistle blew and the ball suddenly soared through the air, heading to his corner. He started backing up, feet moving automatically, and the hook started up again in his head, louder.

The ball hit the chest of one of the kids on his team for the day, bouncing down to the ground, and Calum moved into position, ducking around the boy blocking him so he could be open, ready to be passed to. He felt like he was living in his sweat, like he'd been wet with it for weeks, and his fingers were itching. There was muscle trying stubbornly to pack on his calves and thighs and yet all he could think was that he hadn't touched a guitar in so long that his calluses were peeling off.

Two boys were dicing for the ball and Calum hovered, waiting for something to happen to tell him where he should be. The riff had to lead to something was the problem; it was an intro, not enough to support the backbone of a song. He needed more. He needed more.

Someone kicked the ball down the field, towards the opposing goal, and Calum took off, instinctive as breathing.

He was faster than the boy blocking him and triumph burst through him with every step that widened the gap between them. His heart jackrabbited in his chest, telling him to go faster, faster, and suddenly, with the ball metres from him, he realized that he'd fallen out of rhythm with the music in his head.

He tripped. The boy from the other team passed him, snagged the ball out from basically under his feet. Calum heard the kids on his team yelling something at him, but he had stopped running, standing on the pitch and watching the action of the game move away from him. Everything was swirling around him, the body protesting the switch from movement to stillness, but all he could think was that he'd lost it. The riff, the notes. He couldn't remember what they were, and fuck, they'd been good.

“Oi!” yelled one of the coaches on the sideline. “Calum, you've gotta focus!”

I'm trying, he thought. I just don't know if I can focus on two things at once.

****

“Holy balls,” Michael said. A game controller dangled from his hand, and somehow he looked exactly like Ashton remembered from that party, all flushed cheeks and deliberately messy fringed hair. “That's a terrible shirt.”

Ashton stood in the doorway to Michael's living room, panting, exhausted from biking for the better part of the last hour. He looked down at his t-shirt. It was lavender. He liked it.

“It's not so bad, Michael, geez, he just got here,” Luke said.

Ashton gave him a grateful smile. Luke, he knew, was a good kid—he'd met him before when he was hanging out with a group of friends at the movies. He had cool taste in green glasses and got very flustered when teased.

“You wanna play some FIFA?” Michael asked, pausing the game and holding out an extra controller.

Ashton stared at him. His legs still felt shaky from pedalling up the hill at the end of Michael's road, and all he wanted to do was play drums, sit down and pound them until it settled the uneasiness in his chest. He'd stood in front of his closet for half an hour that morning, fighting with himself over whether or not to come, weighing how much of an asshole it made him with how much he wanted to see Calum again. How much he wanted to be in a fucking band with people who actually liked the same music as him.

“Uh, no, I'm good,” he said belatedly, realizing he'd just been looking at the controller without responding. “I don't like FIFA.”

Michael's mouth dropped open, and he shared a dark, significant look with Luke.

“Okay,” he said. “That's...cool.”

“Where's your third?” Ashton asked, blurting it out before he could stop himself. “There's usually another guy, isn't there? Sings, plays guitar too sometimes?”

He stopped himself before he could add “hot as fuck”, or “good kisser”, or “fantastic ass”.

“Oh yeah, that's Calum,” Luke said. His player on the screen fumbled the ball and he made a little groan of irritation. “He's not here today.”

Michael mumbled something about “liking football better than the band” and Luke elbowed him.

Ashton looked back and forth between the two of them. If Calum couldn't be here then that meant they weren't waiting on anyone anymore. Shouldn't they start practicing or something? But Michael and Luke were just sitting there, still playing FIFA. Was he supposed to sit down and watch them? From where he was standing, it looked like they were the ones who liked football more than the band.

“So,” he said awkwardly. “Do you guys have like, a space you practice in?”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “Well, I mean, it's my garage, but it works. We've got a drum kit you can use.”

“Really?” Ashton said. “Like an actual one?” That was more than he'd been expecting, honestly.

“Okay, no,” Michael said.

“It's electric,” Luke put in.

“Oh,” Ashton said.

There was a long pause. Michael scored a goal onscreen and threw his arms over his head in triumph, letting out a victorious grunting noise.

“I am the king!”

“Fuck off,” Luke said.

Ashton felt very much like wallpaper.

“Are you sure you don't wanna play?” Michael said. “We've got like one more game in this tournament—which I am so winning—and then we could start a new one with you.”

“That's fine, I don't want to play,” Ashton said. What was with them and their obsession with FIFA? “So, what are you guys planning on playing at the gig? Do you have like, original songs you're gonna do, or is it gonna be all covers?”

Michael shrugged.

“We don't really know yet. Like, we've got some songs, yeah.”

Ashton waited for him to expand upon that, maybe list the songs he was referring to, but he just sat there. Playing FIFA.

“Do you know how many people are coming to the gig? You said in your message that there would be loads.” Ashton asked. That promise had been a lot of why he wanted to do this.

Michael's character tripped over thin air, face-planting on the pitch. Luke's character ran into his legs, sprawling in a heap on top of him.

“Hey, watch where you're going!” Michael said, hitting his shoulder into Luke's.

“It's not my fault you suck,” Luke said.

“Guys?” Ashton prompted.

“300 people on facebook said they might come,” Michael grumbled, looking at the ground. His character onscreen had automatically stood up, but he wasn't trying to go anywhere anymore, instead just standing in place, Luke's character hovering besides him. His controller hung uselessly from one hand.

“300?” Ashton said.

“Yeah,” Luke mumbled.

All three of them stared at the screen, the distant buzz of fake commentating echoing throughout the room.

Michael abruptly stood up, grabbing the remote from off the couch beside him and flicking the tv off with one decisive stab of his thumb.

“Well, this is boring,” he said. “Let's show Ashton what we've got.”

What they had was apparently a dirty garage with the aforementioned electric drum kit and a small collection of acoustic and electric guitars.

“Here's where the magic happens!” Michael said, spreading his arms wide. “So for the songs we do with you, me and Luke are going to play guitar and Calum is going to play bass and you are going to be on drums.”

“I don't see a bass,” Ashton said, trying not to look like he was having any sort of reaction to the mention of Calum's name. “Is it at Calum's house?”

“Uh, no,” Luke said, walking over to the wall and picking up a white electric guitar that was leaning against it. “He hasn't really played bass before because we only just decided to have him do that for this gig, since we're getting a drummer to play with us and all. He's kinda just been, you know, playing the top strings on the guitar instead.”

Ashton gaped at him a little. Luke clearly took this as confusion, because he slung the strap of the guitar over his head and started plucking the top strings to demonstrate, making deliberate, compassionate eye contact.

“That doesn't matter, Luke,” Michael said. Clearly he couldn't go five seconds without being the centre of attention. “Ashton is going to be playing the drums. Calum's got the bass thing. He'll be fine. He'll have an actual bass at the gig anyway. What's really important is Ashton playing his own instrument.”

He sat down dramatically at the electric drum kit, almost knocking it over.

“Now, I don't know if you know how to play drums,” he said loudly, pulling out a set of drumsticks. “But you just gotta kind of do it like this.”

To be fair, he could've been worse. He was better than Ashton had been when he first sat down at a drum kit. But he was not a drummer, and after Ashton got over the initial indignation of 'this guy thinks he's got something to teach me?' he had to put his fist in front of his mouth to hide his grin, nodding as Michael banged arrhythmically along.

Michael finished with a little drum roll on the left most drum pad, flicking his sweaty fringe out of his face.

“Yeah, it's not that hard,” he said. “Come on, you give it a go.”

He tossed a drumstick to Ashton and Ashton caught it, spinning it effortlessly around his fingers. Luke raised an eyebrow and Ashton smiled graciously. It was time to deliver a smack down to these lazy asses.

“Sure,” he said.

So maybe he whipped out the drum solo montage he'd created from watching video compilations of Dave Grohl in concerts, but hey—he felt justified. These kids had somehow gotten a gig booked that 300 people might show up to and they weren't prepared at all and were sitting around playing video games. Someone had to show them what it was like to work hard.

It wasn't easy to be impressive on an electric drum kit, but Ashton was pretty sure that his weakest impressive was still better than Michael's. When he got to the end he mimicked the drum roll Michael had done earlier, tapping away at about twice the speed and capping it off with a little flourish.

“Yeah,” he said calmly. “I think I've got the hang of it.”

Michael gaped at him. Luke burst out laughing.

“You're such a dick,” Michael said, a smile growing wide and infectious on his face. Ashton found himself grinning back, not even knowing why. “You're so good, fuck you. This is gonna be awesome. Luke, stop fucking snorting, you homo, and give me my acoustic guitar.”

Ashton felt his smile go crooked on his face and he looked quickly down at his lap, at his hands folded with the drumsticks clutched between his fingers. His knuckles were white with strain. Michael grabbed a scuffed wooden chair that was leaning against the wall and dragged it over to the drum kit. Luke wandered over, still wheezing slightly, and handed Michael a guitar.

“Okay, so we've got a few songs that like, mostly Calum wrote,” Michael said, absentmindedly tuning the guitar. “This one's called 'Gotta Get Out'.”

“Um,” Ashton said. He couldn't help it. It burst out of him like blood out of a punctured artery. He had to know now, before he got tied to this odd group of boys with more than just his stupid, groundless attachment to Calum. “I know this is random to bring up, but I just thought you should know that I'm, uh, I'm bi. Bisexual. So, uh, if you've got an issue with that, you should probably say so now.”

Michael blinked. His hands paused on the neck of the guitar, falling automatically to the first fret like he was about to start playing. Luke darted his eyes back and forth between Michael and Ashton, rodent-like.

“Okay,” Luke said. “Um. Cool?”

“So you're gay?” Michael asked.

“No,” Ashton said, drawing upon every reserve of patience he had. “I like girls and guys. Both.”

Michael nodded slowly.

“Right. Sorry, the 'homo' thing was dumb. It was just a joke. I don't mean that, like, I think you are—” He cut off his own rambling, waving a hand around as if it was supposed to encapsulate his greater meaning. “You're cool. It's cool.”

“Yeah,” said Luke helpfully. “If you can play the drums like that, I don't care whether you have sex with like, a goat.”

“What?” Michael said, turning to look at Luke with an expression that Ashton felt was probably mirrored on his own face. “A goat? Jesus christ, Luke, that's gross.”

“God, just 'cause I'm one of the gays doesn't mean I stand for shit like that,” Ashton said. “Besmirching my fucking honour. God. Goats.”

“One of the gays?” Michael barked out a laugh, strangely high-pitched. “You make it sound like a weird cult, oh my god.”

“The gays,” Ashton repeated in the low voice he liked to use to imitate Gandalf. Michael almost pissed himself laughing.

“But what is it like?” Luke asked, pulling over his own chair. They were both sitting in front of Ashton, the drum kit separating them like some sort of weird desk, and Ashton couldn't help but feel like a teacher, like they were looking to him to impart some wise knowledge. “I mean, what's the difference between girls and boys? You've dated both, right?”

“I've actually only dated guys so far,” Ashton said selfconsciously. He didn't explain that that was because he'd made sure to get a boyfriend first when he came out to prove that he liked them and then it became a weird expectation he didn't know how to shake since everyone at his school thought that bi meant gay. “But I've made out with girls before at parties and stuff and, I dunno, it's not that different to me? Girls are softer, generally.”

Luke looked strangely disappointed, and Ashton had no idea what he had expected him to say. He felt like he was still waiting for someone to kick him out of the garage, say this wasn't going to work out, but they were being okay—albeit in their own, weird, slightly offensive way.

“Okay, I just need to know one thing,” Michael said, holding up a hand. “Do dicks taste good?”

If Ashton had been drinking water he would have spit it out all over them. As it was he dropped one of the drumsticks, almost choking on the suddenness of his laughter.

“What?” Luke said, turning to look at Michael strangely. “That's so weird, why would you ask that?”

“I heard they taste bad!” Michael said defensively. “I don't want the future people sucking my dick to be suffering through it and I can't exactly bend far enough to taste it myself!”

Ashton laughed harder, his stomach cramping. He bent down and picked up the drumstick, wiping a hand over his eyes as he straightened back up.

“Well, they don't taste like fucking candy,” he gasped.

“Obviously,” Michael said. “I'm not stupid.”

Ashton caught Luke's eye and they shared a look that Ashton took to mean 'yeah, he really is'.

“But, like, if you've done it, it can't be that bad,” Michael pressed.

It had been weeks, but Ashton still thought that he could remember exactly how it had felt in the middle of the night to slide his mouth down over Calum's cock, how it had stretched out the ring of his lips and how it throbbed against his tongue when he sucked hard. He thought he could still remember how he tasted, and he felt a wild urge to say that, tell Michael that his best friend's cock had tasted good enough for him to want to suck it again.

He shrugged instead. “Guess you'll never know.”

Michael narrowed his eyes suspiciously, opening his mouth.

“Oh my god,” Luke said, cutting him off before he could say another word. “Can we just play him some of the songs? Because unless you're about to proposition him or something, this is going nowhere and it's just getting weird.”

“I'm not gonna—” Michael's teeth made an audible clacking noise when he shut his mouth, looking back and forth between Ashton and Luke. “I'm not going to proposition him. I'm not going to proposition you. No offense. But no—I'm—no.”

Ashton wanted to snark back at that, wanted to simper sarcastically about 'what a loss', because 'you're so hot', but he still wasn't certain how far he could push it with them yet, how much of an asshole he was allowed to be.

“Well, then—what Luke said. Show me these songs you've got.”

They didn't have a lot, but what they had was weirdly good, compelling in a way that hinted there could be more on the horizon, even cooler things that these songs could lead to. Michael didn't sing much, and he wasn't loud when he did sing, so Ashton couldn't really judge that, but Luke was solidly good, throwing in a little extra riff here and there when he sang. They both could play guitar reasonably well, and although they stumbled, forgetting words or fucking up chords, the something that made their videos bizarrely worth watching was even more tangible in real life. By the third song, something called “Heartbreak For Two”, Ashton was listening as close as he could, trying to figure out how he would drum along to it, and he realized suddenly that there was no question anymore whether he wanted to do this, even if they only let him play with them for one gig. He was already picturing himself among them, trying to find where he could fit.

“So, what do you think?” Michael asked at the end of playing all of their original songs. He looked kind of nervous, like he cared what Ashton thought, and it was so different from what Ashton had seen from him so far that it was almost endearing. Luke was looking at the ground, like he was already expecting criticism.

“I think we should go over them again,” Ashton said. “We need to figure out how me and the drums fit into the songs.”

Luke's head shot up and he and Michael grinned at Ashton and Ashton knew than for sure that he was already sunk, because he wanted this to work even more than he wanted to see Calum again.

****

Calum's feet were whirling beneath him, eating up the ground. He was used to this now, used to the sweat and the strain of his muscles, used to watching the ball and his teammates and twisting himself inside out trying to predict where he needed to be for both of those things. His neck was craned back and the sky above him was a flung out blaze of blue so bright it hurt his eyes, a spread of parachute material slowly billowing down, closing in on him. The ball was a tiny spot against the burn of the sun, and Calum ran and ran.

Someone was yelling his name—maybe a coach, a teammate—he wasn't sure. The sun stabbed directly into his eye and everything went hot and unclear—he could hear Michael saying his name, could hear Luke, could hear Jake saying it over and over and over again, until it slurred together in one buzz of sound. Calum knew what he had to do. He closed his eyes, planted his foot, leaned forward onto it and launched himself into the air.

Everything was quiet for a split second, and then the ball hit him, directly on the crown of his head. He felt it press against his hair and his skin, his sweat meeting the muddy surface in a brief kiss of contact, and then it was ricocheting off and Calum was falling back towards the ground.

Somewhere in the time that he'd spent in the air, he'd forgotten that landing was a thing he needed to plan for. His heels hit the ground first and skidded out, unstable, and he slammed flat onto his back on the grass, all the breath driven sharp and painful out of his body.

He opened his eyes, and all he could see was the sky above him. The voices of his teammates were growing distant—they were chasing after wherever the ball had gone. He didn't know if he'd sent it in the right direction but he couldn't bring himself to care because the sky was wide and bright above him and his whole body hurt and in the back of his mind there was music building up.

I don't want to be here, he thought. It came slowly, the idea unfurling like new leaves in spring. He didn't want to be there, and he didn't want to be doing this. He was used to this now, and it wasn't exciting anymore, not the way it used to be.

Exciting belonged to writing songs in his room and playing guitar with Michael and Luke in the music room.

Exciting belonged to Jake and the note Calum still had shoved into the drawer of his bedside table.

“Calum?”

A fuzzy face appeared above him—it was Ben, the kid who slept in the bunk above him.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked.

Calum took a deep breath. You're going home in a few days, he told himself. Just a few more days, and then you can be new. Maybe—maybe you could even call him. And maybe it was the sky and maybe it was the ground against his back, but he didn't feel scared thinking about it.

“Yeah,” he said, and he sat up. In the distance he could see the ball being kicked down the field, and he could tell by where they were that he'd done it wrong, and he'd headed the ball in the wrong direction. He didn't really care, but it was like a nail in the coffin anyway. “Yeah, I'm fine.”

****

“Calum's back from his football thing!” Michael had said.

“He's told his parents he wants to focus on the band and stuff!” Michael had said.

“He'll be at this practice!” Michael had said.

So, Ashton had been standing outside of Michael's house for the past five minutes, unable to work up the courage to go inside, or to even knock at all. He'd left his bike on the lawn, and whenever he looked back at it, all he could think of was the bike he'd seen on Calum's lawn a month ago. For some dumb reason he'd put on the same purple shirt he'd been wearing when he'd first met Michael and Luke. In his head it felt important, like the three of them could all be united against the shirt, or that Ashton could be tied to Michael and Luke just by the inside joke of how terrible the shirt was. Their second band practice, two days ago, had involved them teasing him a lot for his taste in shirts and his lack of love for FIFA, the familiarity of one day of knowing each other making them loose and easy around him.

He didn't want to walk in and have Calum see him and kick him out. He didn't want to lose the hope of something with Calum, but even more than that, he didn't want to lose what was just starting to build with Michael and Luke and him—something that could only be finished by Calum joining them. He wanted to be in this band, dumb and shitty as they were. And he knew that they weren't even asking that of him—they just wanted him for a gig—but he couldn't help but hope, because he was stupid like that. He made blueprints of hope and built his dreams with hard work, but sometimes even when he felt like he'd done enough concrete things to make it happen, the thing that he was standing on was still precarious, still made of just hope. He didn't know what he was standing on now, whether it was going to disintegrate underneath his feet the second Calum saw him, or whether it would grow strong and make a bridge, cross the space between them. He didn't know anything.

For the third time since he rolled up five minutes ago, Ashton raised his hand to knock, but the door flung open before he could figure out if he was going to actually do it.

“Why are you just sulking outside?” Michael said, raising an eyebrow. “Get in here. You gotta meet Cal.”

“He's already here?” Ashton said. His voice sounded distant even to his own ears, and his feet felt like they were glued to the cement stoop.

“Yeah, he came early this morning. His football camp sounds like it was hardcore,” Michael said. “You'll like him, I swear.”

Everything was happening too fast, and even though Ashton was the one who actually had known that this was going to happen, he felt like there was no way he was prepared to see Calum again. Before he'd infiltrated Calum's band, there hadn't been so much at stake, but now—

“Michael?”

Ashton might have only heard it for one night, but he knew that voice, the sweet, high kick of it, knew how it rang around in his empty chest. Michael looked behind him, pulling the door open wider, and Ashton could see the whole entryway, could see where the wall curved off into a doorway, could hear approaching footsteps.

“Are you hogging the drummer?” Calum called. “Is that him? I wanna finally see wh—”

He shot into view in the hallway just behind Michael, a hand curving around the turn of the wall, and Ashton's world narrowed down to the space Calum was occupying. His hair was shorter than the last time Ashton had seen him, and it made him look younger. A thin singlet hung off of his shoulders, wide gape in the armpit leaving the bare ridges of his ribs exposed. There was a smile sitting welcoming on his face, preemptive, and Ashton watched it falter and die when their eyes met. He had no idea what his own face was doing, knew only that Calum was in front of him.

“Calum,” Michael said, miraculously not noticing anything amiss. “This is—”

“Ashton,” Ashton cut in, because he may have lied to Calum about what his name was, but he was sure as hell going to be the one to tell him the truth. “I'm Ashton. Drummer. We should—we should talk. You know, because I'm new and stuff. And I haven't met you. We should talk.”

He managed to move one leg, take a tiny step into the house, just so that he could reach out and take Calum's hand in his own. He meant just to use it to lead him outside, but once he was touching him he couldn't help but squeeze, and suddenly Calum was twisting their fingers together, his hand shaking against Ashton's palm. His face hadn't changed, but Ashton pulled him forward by the clinging connection of their hands and Calum stumbled to the edge of the doorway, almost knocking into Michael.

“We should talk out here,” Ashton said. “Just us.” He made himself tear his eyes away from the mask that was Calum's expression and look at Michael, who seemed to be catching onto something strange happening here, his gaze flicking from Calum's profile to their clasped hands. “You know, new musicians talk.”

“Okaaaay,” Michael said slowly. “Whatever. Just...don't take too long. We got stuff to do.”

Calum stepped out onto the stoop, his fingernails digging into the back of Ashton's hand, and Michael closed the door behind him, leaving them alone under the overcast sky.

“Ashton,” Calum said quietly, and accusation lay thick on the word.

“Yes,” Ashton said. “Just let me explain. You gave me a fake name too, okay. And you told me you were sixteen.”

“So I'm fifteen, whatever, like one year is that much of a difference,” Calum said sharply, and finally there was a flash of something other than shock in his eyes when he lifted them to Ashton's face. “I told you my real name.”

“I told you mine too,” Ashton said. “But you'd already fallen asleep, so you didn't hear. I told you after I—after I sucked you off.”

Calum's hand was gone, ripped from his with a suddenness that left his knuckles aching.

“You can't just fucking say that,” Calum said. “Not here, jesus.”

“I'm sorry,” Ashton said. “I was going to tell you again in the morning but then I—I had to go. Did you not find my note?”

“I found it,” Calum said shortly. He wasn't looking at Ashton anymore, and there was something brittle and bird-like about the way he was holding himself, like he'd fly away if Ashton tried to touch him. “Fuck, I was going to call you tomorrow,” he added, quiet, like he didn't really mean to say it.

“I'm sorry I'm suddenly here,” Ashton said. “I know that's weird, but I—I actually do play the drums and I want to play with your bang for this gig. Remember when we were—remember how I said I wanted to be a musician and play shows and stuff? That wasn't a lie.”

There was a short silence. Ashton couldn't read Calum's expression at all, and it made him feel knocked off balance, frantic.

“Did you know who I was when you—” Calum cut himself off, but Ashton knew what he meant.

“No,” Ashton said. “I didn't know your name was Calum until you told me. And I didn't know you were in this band until Michael asked me to drum for you guys for a gig and I looked at your videos.”

“But you knew it was going to be me when you met up with Luke and Mikey the first time,” Calum said. The anger was building up in his voice, and beneath it Ashton could hear a hint of fear. It was everything he'd been worried it would be, everything he'd tried to ignore so that he could do this, have it all. When Calum had been underneath him a month ago, Ashton had done his best to make sure he wasn't scared, and now he was making him feel exactly like that. “And the second. And you knew I was going to be here tonight.”

“I think you guys are good,” Ashton said helplessly. “Or you really could be. I play drums with my mum's boyfriend's band in pubs and I play with a bunch of weird death-metal bands and kids at lunch with bongos and I just want to have a chance to play with people who like the same music I do. I want more.”

He paused, not knowing if what he wanted to say next was going to make everything ten times worse. He couldn't help it—he had to say it anyway.

“And I fucking wanted to see you again. I'm sorry, but that's the truth.”

Calum barked out a short, humourless laugh. His head twisted on his neck, looking from the sky to the ground to the door behind them, looking at anything and everything that wasn't Ashton, and his hands came up and slid into his hair, pushing it off his face. Ashton had seen him with those hands covering his entire face, had seen him red-cheeked and open for it, and still he didn't know him, didn't know a goddamn thing about how this was going to go down.

“I was going to call you,” Calum said. “I was going to call you.”

“I'm sorry,” Ashton repeated, because there was really nothing else left in him. Nothing left that he could say, even if a horrible, tiny flame was burning away in his gut, telling him that it was worth it just to see Calum again.

Calum smiled, small and disbelieving, and his eyes flashed up, finally lighting on Ashton's face.

“You're an asshole,” he said slowly. “And this is fucked, but I—I'm kinda—”

He waved his arms around him, as if he could draw his meaning in the air, and then suddenly gave up, taking one step into Ashton and slumping forward to rest his forehead against Ashton's shoulder. Ashton stared down at the top of Calum's head, at the swirls of his black hair, his own hands dangling uselessly at his sides. Was he allowed to—? He went for it, couldn't help himself, and placed his palms gently on Calum's back, holding him in a strange, awkward, one-sided hug.

“I'm kinda happy to see you again anyway,” Calum muttered. Ashton could feel the heat of his breath pushing through his shirt and he stroked one hand up the ridge of Calum's spine, soaking in the feel of him.

He was staring off over Calum's head down the side of the front of Michael's house, but he was feeling so off-kilter with everything that had happened in the last few minutes that it took him a long moment to realize someone was watching them through Michael's front bay window. Luke was leaning forward into the jut of the window off the wall, blatantly staring through the glass at Calum and Ashton, his eyes wide. Ashton's fingers dug into Calum's back for a split second, protective and freaked out by what Luke was seeing—two people who should've been strangers huddled together in a weird sort of embrace—and then he lifted one hand and made a deliberate shooing motion. Luke looked from his hand to his face, expression blankly confused, and then he was gone, pulling his head back properly out of the window.

Calum rocked back on his heels, abruptly shouldering his way out of Ashton's arms, and Ashton felt a spike of resentment for stupid Luke distracting him and making him not appreciate the last few seconds of getting to hold Calum as much as he could have.

“You're still an asshole,” Calum said firmly. His cheeks were pink. “Just so you know.”

It started to rain then, soft droplets falling down around them in a shush of white noise. They stepped closer together automatically, huddling under the tiny lip of Michael's roof sticking out over the front door. Calum's face was so close that Ashton could make out every separate eyelash, every crack on his chapped lips. He wanted to kiss him very, very badly. He wanted to make him laugh.

“What do I have to do?” Ashton asked. “I could woo you with my drumming skills. They're pretty sweet.”

Ashton got one of his wishes: Calum's eyes crinkled up and he giggled, small and cute.

“Shut up,” he said, looking horribly endeared by Ashton. “That's adorable, shut up.”

“I'm going to woo the fuck out of you,” Ashton promised, and Calum laughed again, shoved him backwards a few steps. The rain was a cold shock on the side of his face, but it was brief—Calum was pulling him back to safety with a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back into his space like he was sure he wanted him there.

“I'd be okay with that,” Calum said, a pleased twist at the corner of his mouth. He kept glancing up at Ashton and looking away, like the instinct to hide was warring with whatever was keeping his hand on Ashton's shoulder, thumb slipping in the neckline to press against his skin.

“Glad we're agreed,” Ashton said vaguely. He didn't want to go back inside, much as he liked Michael and Luke, much as he wanted to find out how the four of them sounded together. Something told him that the way Calum was in this moment would change as soon as they were around other people.

Calum's hand lifted off of his shoulder, reaching up and thumbing a drop of rain off of the corner of Ashton's forehead.

“I haven't—” he said slowly, his fingers resting soft and uncertain on the side of Ashton's head. “I haven't had a chance to—Mikey and Luke, they can't—”

He seemed to lose the rest of his words in his throat, but Ashton was already nodding.

“I wouldn't,” he said. “I swear I won't, you can trust—”

The door flew open and Calum jumped back away from Ashton, a fingernail catching in his hair and yanking him forward before it ripped free.

“Jesus Christ, are you guys planning on eloping, or what? We've got shit to go over,” Michael said, peering suspiciously at them.

Ashton had a split second to feel a weird mix of annoyance and pride at Michael's apparent character development before Calum was pushing past him to the door, pointy elbow knocking carelessly against Ashton's ribs. Michael raised an eyebrow at them both as they scrambled inside.

“Shut up, you fag,” Calum muttered at Michael. It was delivered with a little smile, probably meant to come across as joking, but instead it just sounded too strung out, too tense.

Ashton looked down quickly at his shoes, only just catching the nervous flicker of Michael's eyes in his direction. He could still feel the phantom heat of Calum's thumb pressing against his temple, and he bent down and focused on untying his shoelaces and not feeling like the bottom of his stomach had been ripped out and he'd been set adrift. He'd been right—the Calum he'd just been talking to on the doorstep in the rain had disappeared as soon as Michael had shown up. You were like that once too, he told himself. He'll get past it.

“Um,” said Michael, loud and deliberate. “Calum, we don't—say that kind of stuff anymore. I mean, we shouldn't, 'cause like, Ash is bi, so...”

Something small lit up in Ashton's chest, a little lighthouse leading him back, and he smiled stupidly at the ground. Michael could be stupid as fuck, but he could be really good too.

“Oh,” said Calum, and his voice sounded tiny and distant. Ashton pulled a shoe off and glanced up, trying to see his face, but Calum was turned away from him, shrugging jerkily. “Whatever. Cool.”

He went into the living room and Ashton and Michael exchanged a look, Michael's asking “you good?” while also trying to convey “see, Calum's okay with it, it's fine”, and Ashton's saying “it's alright, I'm fine”. Michael nodded decisively, made some sort of hand gesture that probably meant something supportive in a bro-ish way, and followed Calum through the doorway.

Ashton took a moment just to breath, sitting there on Michael's front mat, one leg stretched out in front of him, red reindeer socks on full display, and the other tucked up to his chest, his fingers hooked limply into the laces of his shoe. He'd seen Calum and the world hadn't ended. It hadn't gone exactly how he might have wanted it to, but he was still here and no one had kicked him out yet.

He had only just gotten his heel out of his shoe when Luke appeared in the doorway. He was looking at Ashton funny, and Ashton froze, remembering what he'd seen through the window.

“So how do you and Cal—”

Ashton surged to his feet, wobbling crazily with one shoe still half on, and grabbed Luke's arm, pulling him into the hallway and away from any line of sight from the living room.

“Don't,” he whispered. Luke blinked at him, all doe eyes and confusion, and Ashton realized that a massive overreaction like that probably gave away more than anything he could've said. There was nothing for it now. He had to go for as much truth as he could give without giving up Calum. “You haven't asked Calum anything yet, have you?”

“No,” Luke said softly, automatically mimicking Ashton's volume. Ashton let go of his arm, feeling ridiculous. “He's talking to Mikey. You guys know each other?”

“We've met before,” Ashton said quietly. “It's not a big deal, I was just confirming that it was him, that's all. But you can't ask Calum about it, okay? He'd be really weirded out if he knew you had seen us like, hugging, or whatever.”

“I don't know why,” Luke said grumpily. “He cuddles us all the time.” He sounded almost jealous, like Calum cuddles belonged to him and Michael only.

“It's—just don't, okay?” Ashton said. “Please?”

“You're weird,” Luke said, and Ashton fixed him with his most serious imploring face. “Okay, yeah, I've got it. If it's important, Cal will tell us.”

“Exactly,” Ashton said. “You're a good egg, Lucas Hemmings.”

Luke laughed, and in the distance Michael yelled something about FIFA and how he was still better than Calum and “fuck your football camp”. Luke rolled his eyes and toddled backwards, bumping into the wall first before he managed to turn properly and make his way through the doorway. Ashton took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The opening of his shoe was cutting a painful line into the arch of his foot, and he finally kicked it off.

He could do this. It was all going to be fine. Probably.

****

The level of “fine” swung back and forth all afternoon like the constant tick of a pendulum, horrible one moment and hopeful the next.

Ashton would say something funny and Calum would laugh, all curled in on himself and cute. And then Ashton would say something funny and Michael would laugh and Calum would get this pinched look on his face like Ashton had stolen his toys on Christmas morning. Ashton would maneuver his way next to Calum on the couch and nudge their ankles together and Calum would grin down at his lap and press his foot against Ashton's. And then Ashton would touch his waist as he walked back from the kitchen with a glass of milk and Calum would jerk away from his hand. Ashton would say something to him and Calum would say something back, and then Ashton would try it five minutes later and Calum would shrug and mumble like he didn't give a shit about what Ashton was saying. It didn't help that Luke kept giving them strange looks, to the point where Calum would move away from Ashton anytime Luke even glanced over in their direction.

There was FIFA and some more teasing of Ashton's shirt—teasing Calum joined in on gleefully. Ashton pretended to be annoyed, but he was mostly just watching how Calum fit into these two boys he'd gotten to know, how he slotted into them as friends. It was weird to think that Ashton actually knew Michael and Luke better than he did Calum, that he'd spent more time with the other two over their past few band rehearsals. Looking at the three of them together made him feel weirdly anxious—they didn't seem like they needed a fourth, not as a friend at least. It was only when they finally moved to the garage to actually practice that Ashton finally felt like the prickle under his skin was settling down.

“You said something about having awesome drum skills,” Calum said, darting a shy little look at Ashton.

“Come on, Ashton!” Luke said, gesturing to the drum kit. “Gotta prove Michael's not terrible at finding fellow band type people.”

“Musicians,” Michael said delicately. “The word is musicians, Luke.”

Calum split into a big smile when Ashton first sat down and played the drums a little for him, just to show him what he had, and it didn't waver even when Ashton grinned back at him.

And when they all played together—well, not the first time, the first time they had to figure out how to fit Calum in and it was a shit show for a solid half hour and about the first eight times they tried to play one song—when they all played together and finally got it right, it felt like Ashton was finally sliding into place, like he'd been lost and not known until this moment. They didn't smile during that first proper go through—everyone was too focused, eyes closed when they sang, fingers careful on the frets, Ashton drumming away as if his shitty electric drum kit could make the sounds he really wanted to get. It didn't matter that the drum kit sucked, or that Calum didn't have a proper bass—just the four of them sitting there in Michael's garage was what felt right, the four of them making music. When they got to the end of the song they all just kind of grinned around at each other, tensions forgotten in the thrill of a sound coming together.

It was sloppy, but...it was something.

Supper meant lots of polite questions from Michael's parents, which felt weirdly like meeting the in-laws, while Michael grumbled into his mashed potatoes and Luke laughed at him. Calum was across from Ashton at the table, and he tried to play a little footsie with him, pulling mock-innocent faces when Calum jerked and looked suspiciously at him over the top of the gravy boat. Calum got his own back though, waiting until Ashton had a full mouth of broccoli before he slid his foot up Ashton's shin. Ashton almost choked and somehow ended up kicking Luke and Calum laughed so hard that his cheeks turned bright red and Michael's mom asked if he needed to take a minute.

“No, I'm good,” Calum wheezed.

He met Ashton's eyes and he didn't look away.

****

It had finally stopped raining by the time they finished eating and when they stepped outside the air felt warm and smelled like the inside of some sort of nature-washing machine: damp and clean and earthy all at once. Ashton paused on the top step of Michael's back porch, the toe of his shoes hanging over the edge, and looked up at the sky above, at the ink black spread of darkness. There were no stars—it was too bright down where Ashton was for any light up there to show.

Michael made some sort of weird ape noise and leaped past Ashton to land triumphantly on the squishy grass, spraying mud up the side of Luke's pants. Luke squawked indignantly and started chasing Michael around the small, fenced in backyard, their bodies blurring into hazy shapes in the flatness of the dark. Ashton's body rocked forward, wanting to join them, and then something was colliding with the back of his shoulder, knocking him off balance.

He wobbled sideways, on the brink of falling, and a hand wrapped around his arm and jerked him back. He looked over his shoulder to see Calum standing just behind him, his eyes a liquid black. Ashton could feel the press of Calum's body against the right wing of his shoulderblade, could feel the shift of his chest when he took in a deep, endless breath.

Calum let go of him abruptly.

“Sorry,” he said, and Ashton didn't have time to figure out what exactly he meant by that before he was gone, bounding down the steps and tackling Luke around the middle.

“No!” Luke screeched, fighting to stay upright with Calum clinging to him. “No, no, it's muddy, don't—”

“Take him down, Calum!” Michael yelled.

“Nooooo!”

Luke wriggled his way out of Calum's grip and danced backwards, his shoes making wet squishing noises against the saturated grass.

“You guys are assholes,” he said.

“You guys are weird,” Ashton corrected, finally making his way down the steps to stand on the lawn with them.

“Last one to the flat has to sleep on the floor!” Michael said suddenly, exploding into movement. He pushed by Calum and booked it across the yard, Luke hot on his heels. It took Ashton a second to catch on, but he managed to pass Calum and get there third, almost running into Luke's back where he and Mikey were huddled at the door to his granny flat, trying to get it open.

“No fair,” Calum said, skidding to a halt next to Ashton. “You had a head start.”

There was a creaking noise in the distance and then Michael's mum yelling something about them keeping it down and getting to sleep. Michael yelled something back that was vaguely agreeable and finally managed to get the door open, allowing them to spill inside.

“No complaining, Calum,” Michael said as they all kicked their shoes off. They were standing in a simple living room, with a small kitchen to the right that was set aside only by a strange half wall that looked like it would come up to Ashton's hip. There was a lounge and a tv and pink, circular rug between the two. To the left was a short hallway that had two doors leading off of it—probably a bedroom and a bathroom. “You snooze, you lose.”

“You lose, you snooze in an undesirable location,” Luke put in.

“Undesirable,” Ashton said, rolling it around in his mouth to feel the shape of each letter. “What a word.”

He felt stupid as soon as he'd said it, but for some reason no one made fun of him.

“I get the bed, obviously,” Michael said. “And I guess Luke can share.”

“Come on,” Calum whined. “I can fit on the bed too. I'm small enough.”

“Yeah, but you kick,” said Luke. This, Ashton thought, had not been his experience, but maybe Calum just slept more soundly after being fucked. It was a nice idea.

“And Ashton gets the lounge,” Michael said.

Ashton glanced over at where the couch was sitting against the far wall. It was wide and low to the ground, with those big, squishy cushions that looked like you could sink right into them. He pictured himself snuggled up there with Calum comfortably in his arms, and felt a guilty thrill go through him.

“Hey,” he said, slinging an arm around Calum's shoulder and pulling him in close. “Couch looks like it could fit two.” He fought down a grin, tucking it away into the corner of his mouth. “We could always share. I don't mind if you kick.”

Michael laughed, loud and bright, and Calum froze up under Ashton's touch, his entire face shutting down. He ducked out from underneath Ashton's arm, one hand planting flat on Ashton's ribcage and shoving him away so that he staggered backwards one step, foot landing unsteady on someone's shoe.

“No,” Calum blurted, the word exploding like a bomb in a quiet field. “I don't—not with you. No, thanks.”

Calum's face looked like it was carved from stone, his chin set, stubborn, and Ashton couldn't see anything familiar in him. The words “not with you” slammed around his head, sharp with implications. He felt suddenly, horribly exposed, skinned open and all too aware of Michael and Luke staring at him. Humiliation came in a sickly wave, rising thick in his throat like he was going to vomit, and Ashton jerked his head away to stare at the ground, fighting hard not to let anything show.

“Right,” he said, and god, his voice—his voice sounded brittle, sounded like it was breaking. He cleared his throat and looked up, nailing on a smile so broad that it hurt his face. “Fine by me. Guy who never shows up to band practice doesn't deserve a good night's sleep in my mind anyway. You get the floor.”

He clapped Calum on the shoulder, hard enough to shake him, and then pushed by him into the living room. He needed everyone to stop looking at him for just one second, needed to tie himself back together.

He could hear Michael and Calum moving away down the tiny hall, talking about something in low voices, Michael's just a hiss of sound, and then Luke was appearing at his shoulder, hovering awkwardly.

“Hey, Cal doesn't mean anything, like—you know, you can always stay with me in the bed, I could convince Mikey to take the couch,” Luke said, stupidly earnest. “I swear it's not a big dea—”

Ashton needed him to leave, needed to be alone with a ferocity that shook through him and made him feel scared and small. He felt too unsteady to have people looking at him, and he didn't care what Luke had to say, no matter how good his intentions were.

“I'm good, Luke,” Ashton said, and to his relief he didn't sound like he was about to die anymore. “About sleeping on the couch. It's totally fine. And I'm kinda tired, so I'll probably turn in soonish, you know, just gonna go to the bathroom first.”

Luke opened his mouth like he was going to say something else, but Ashton was already motoring past him. He managed to get into the bathroom without anyone saying anything else to him, and without catching a glimpse of Calum through the open bedroom door. Once he was inside, door closed and locked behind him, he stood there, staring at himself in the mirror. He took stock of the reality of where and who he was, of how every part of his body felt, the strains and the aches deep in his muscles, in his bones. He closed his eyes and ground the heels of his hands against the back of his eyelids, black and grey staticy patterns scorching across his vision, and he breathed. In and out. In and out.

He could remember asking his mum why all the kids at school had dads and he didn't. He could feel exactly what it was like to move again and again, to say goodbye to people who barely knew him and say hello to people he wasn't sure he'd get a chance to know. He could see Evan standing in the doorway to his bedroom, blond hair curling down into his eyes, saying in a slow, bored voice, that being together wasn't good anymore, wasn't interesting, that it was Ashton who wasn't interesting, and he felt the weight of longing settle deep in his stomach, anchoring him in place in Michael's tiny little bathroom. He just wanted to belong to somewhere, to something, to someone, and every time he thought he had it in his grasp he ended up feeling like this all over again.

He stayed in the bathroom until his breathing calmed down and the sharp urgency of hurt had eroded to a dull ache of embarrassment. He took a piss and washed his hands and slapped himself lightly in the face a couple times.

“Shape up,” he told his reflection sternly.

When he got out of the bathroom, the other three were laughing about something in the bedroom; Ashton caught a glimpse of a big flowery bed and the flickering lights of a tv as he passed, but he didn't stop. Michael called out after him, but another voice cut him off—Luke—whispering something about Ashton wanting to go to sleep. He didn't really want to sleep; he wanted to join them, even if it was just to sit in their presence and watch whatever video game they were probably playing. But he couldn't go back on what he'd said now, and so he made his way to the living room.

While he'd been in the bathroom, someone had gotten it ready: there was a blanket and a pillow lying out on the couch, and a small mattress pad with a sleeping bag on it lying in the middle of the room, framed by the circle of the pink rug. The blanket looked much warmer and nicer than the sleeping bag and Ashton felt a weird mix of guilt and fondness and vindictive smugness swirl in his stomach.

They'd brought all of their bags out to the granny flat before they'd even started practicing in the garage, so it only took a moment for Ashton to find his pyjama pants and shirt in his. He thought about going back to the bathroom to put them on, but the idea of crossing in front of the bedroom door again was terrifying. Instead, he just changed right there, fast and self-conscious, hoping that no one came out and saw him. Everything about his body felt stranger and uglier than usual—he'd have thought that being one of the only out kids at his school would have given him a tougher skin, but apparently there was nothing like being made to look stupid in front of people he actually liked to throw him back to square one.

He couldn't find the light switch and he didn't want to ask Michael where it was. He stood in the middle of the room, next to Calum's mattress pad, listening to the distant sound of the other three talking, and tried not to feel completely and utterly pathetic. It wasn't their fault that Ashton just wanted too much and never knew how to get it. He knew that. After a long moment of standing there, he crawled onto the couch—which was just as comfortable and big as he'd thought it would be—and pressed his face into the back cushion, closing his eyes.

Somehow, he was asleep in minutes.

****

“Ashton?”

It was dark. It was dark and Ashton was so warm, that kind of enveloping sort of warmth that made it feel like he had no edges to his body, like he was just one huge cloud of comfort. It took him a long, dazed moment to make out a spot on him that was warmer than the rest—a spot where there was a grounding sort of pressure.

A hand. Someone else's hand.

“Ashton?”

Ashton was starting to come back to himself, his consciousness shrinking down from the nebulous idea of warm to the confines of his body, and he could feel the couch underneath him, the blanket on top, could feel the twist of material in his fingers where he'd evidently grabbed a fistful in his sleep. The hand touching him wasn't shaking him, just resting there on his shoulder, heavy over the curve of the blanket tucked in around his neck. The hand wasn't asking for anything, but the voice—the voice was urgent, even though it was so quiet that it almost got lost in the air.

“Ashton?”

Ashton didn't think, just moved, slowly rolling over onto his back and opening his eyes. At first everything was still just as dark as when he'd had them closed—guess Michael found the light switch, he thought distantly—but as his eyes adjusted he could make out the outline of someone's head and the dull glimmer of eyes.

“What?” he whispered. “Calum?”

“I—” Calum ducked his head down, looking away from Ashton. Ashton couldn't see his bottom half, but he was shirtless, a faint blue light falling on the bare hunch of his shoulders. That was right—he had to sleep out here. He'd been on the ground next to Ashton.

“What time is it?” Ashton asked. He felt like he was floating. Calum's hand on his shoulder didn't seem real.

“I shouldn't have woken you up,” Calum said miserably. “It's late, I—”

Ashton blinked hard, trying to get rid of the fog of sleep still covering his mind so he could focus on Calum properly. There was something off about him, and Ashton couldn't remember why he'd been so hurt before he went to sleep, could only remember the way Calum had curled into his chest a month ago, sweet and vulnerable.

“What is it?” he asked. “Calum? Are you okay?”

“I'm sorry,” Calum blurted. “I'm sorry I acted like such a shit, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just scared.”

The last word fell soft and paper thin out of Calum's mouth like he hadn't meant to say it. His whole body seemed to cave in; he toppled forward, pressing his face to the couch, the top of his head butting up against Ashton's ribs. Ashton stared at him, at the ridge of his spine sticking up against his skin, washed pale and frost blue in the dim light, and one of his hands moved without his permission, resting tentatively on Calum's shoulder. Calum jerked under the touch, and then settled into it, letting out one shaky exhale.

“It's—” Ashton couldn't say 'fine', because it wasn't, but Calum was already lifting his head and cutting him off.

“I didn't mean to make you feel shitty or anything,” Calum said. “I swear that's the last thing I want.”

Ashton smoothed his hand up and down the line of Calum's back, the slats of his ribs somehow maddeningly familiar against his palm.

“We all get scared,” he said. He wondered if Michael and Luke were asleep, wondered if this tiny, hushed conversation could be heard in the bedroom down the hall.

Calum was quiet for a minute, tucking an arm up on the couch and resting his chin on it. Ashton watched his face, the darkness unfolding more and more by the minute so that everything was starting to come into proper view.

“I told my family.”

Ashton's hand stopped, thumb digging into the nape of Calum's neck.

“When I got back from football camp.” Calum's voice was less than a whisper, was barely a breath. Ashton could still hear him. “I told my parents and my sister that I didn't want to do football anymore and that I was gay.” He paused, and then laughed, soft and sickly. “They were more upset about the football thing.”

“Isn't that good?” Ashton said. “That they were okay with it?”

“Yes?” Calum said. He pushed his face into Ashton's side, rubbing his cheek against the spot where his sleep shirt was riding up. His open mouth dragged wet over Ashton's skin and Ashton held as still as he could, something shivering hot and hopeful in his chest. “I don't know. Yes, yes, it's good, they were fine, but—but it's all so fucked up, Ash. What if I'm wrong about this? What if I tell people and I have to deal with all this shit and then—and then it's not real?”

“Does it feel like you're wrong?”

Calum's breath huffed out hot against Ashton's hip.

“No,” he whispered. “But it's—it's different with—like, with my family, they have to love me. But Mikey and Luke don't. People at school don't.”

“Calum,” Ashton said, wanting desperately to pull Calum into his arms. “Calum, Luke and Michael were fine with me, they'd still love you.”

“I know, I know I have no reason to feel like this, I know it's stupid,” Calum said, looking up at Ashton with his eyes wild.

“That's not what I meant,” Ashton said helplessly. He had no idea what he was supposed to do or say here.

“This just wasn't supposed to be—” Calum stopped, taking a deep, slow breath. “Wasn't supposed to be me.”

And there was nothing Ashton could say to that. He traced his fingers over the outline of Calum's shoulder blades, pressing to feel the shift of skin over bone, and let Calum rest against him.

“Calum?” he said at length.

“Yeah?”

“Did your sister make you breakfast?”

Calum looked up and a tiny shaft of light cut a sliver of ghostly blue across his punched expression. Ashton opened his mouth to explain—in case Calum didn't get it, didn't understand what Ashton was telling him (I didn't leave you by choice, your family knew long ago, I asked her to stay quiet for you)—but Calum was suddenly surging up on his elbows and cutting him off in a kiss.

Ashton's eyes fell shut and he kissed back automatically, closing his mouth to press into it. Time was suddenly liquid molasses, pouring out sweet and slow, the cling of their mouths stretching seconds into minutes, even as everything inside Ashton felt like it was vibrating out of control, like he was going to shatter apart. When Calum pulled back Ashton wanted desperately to follow him, to kiss him again, but somehow he couldn't move, pinned in place under the weight of the feeling in his chest. He opened his eyes and stared at Calum's face hovering inches from his own, curiously blank.

“Yes,” Calum said. “She made me breakfast.”

Ashton nodded, barely able to think. He'd never wanted anything like he wanted this.

“You can share the lounge with me,” Ashton said. “There's space.”

Calum smiled.

“No,” he said.

Ashton watched him draw back, slow and careful, like a surgeon pulling a scalpel out of someone's heart, and then crawl across the room to where his mattress pad was, sleeping bag askew. Calum grabbed a corner and dragged it over until it was right next to the couch, and then got into the sleeping bag. There was a sense of finality to his movements, to the “no” hanging between them, and Ashton lay back down himself, feeling a hollow sort of confusion.

It took him a long moment to realize that there was a hand resting on the couch next to his shoulder, palm facing up, fingers slightly curled, open. Waiting. He slid his own hand across and slowly wound their fingers together, slotting into place just like they had the second they had seen each other again that morning. It wasn't an answer, it wasn't really anything, but Ashton would take it, because Ashton was too weak not to. Calum said “no”, but Calum was still here, and Ashton couldn't leave him waiting.

Neither of them said good night, but neither of them let go.

****

Calum had known when he posted the ad. Alone in his room, with sweat sitting on his body like a second skin, feeling jittery and nervous as he typed, he'd known. There was no real excuse of getting over the shock of a discovery. He knew he was being stupid now, knew that trying to reset himself to before that knowledge made no sense, and yet he kept feeling surprised all over again when it didn't work. There was only so long he could keep running into a brick wall over and over again and not expect it to hurt. He knew, and he had known.

He'd kissed a girl for the first time when he was 12. She had a round face and short blond hair and she liked to wear boy's shorts and play football during recess instead of hanging around with the girls. Calum had fancied himself in love with her, had spent ages feeling stupid and tongue-tied in her presence, tripping over the ball and making a fool of himself. It was her who made the move, who pulled him behind the goalpost one day after inviting him to practice alone with her after school. It was her who'd gone for the kiss.

Calum could remember the smell of her—like vanilla-tinged sweat, mixed with the thick, earthy mulch of the mud and grass that was under their feet and splattered up their legs. He could remember the particular tilt of his head, and how strange the world beyond her face looked when it was tipped like that, before he figured out that his eyes were supposed to be closed. He could remember that he was distracted by a cut on his leg, throbbing bright and heavy just above his left knee. But he couldn't remember the kiss—not what it felt like, not how long it was. Not the taste. He remembered a vague bewilderment, and the shy smile on her face when she pulled away. Nothing more.

They'd dated for about two weeks, and kissed only a couple more times, always short and close-mouthed, not knowing how to go beyond that. She was the one who broke up with him, telling him earnestly that he was really nice, and she wanted to still be friends, but that the track competitions were coming up and she had to focus. He'd felt only distantly hurt, and was angrier about his own lack of feeling than the actual breakup. In his head, it was her fault that he didn't miss the relationship more, and he spent weeks after it being horrible to her, even though he'd told her originally that it was fine and they could still be friends. Eventually things between them smoothed over, but they were never friends again like they had been before, and for years Calum carried the ache of it in his heart like a weird talisman, building himself around the idea that his first love broke his heart. He used it like a shield, like a wall around him, shoring himself up against the idea of liking any other girls, against the idea that maybe he didn't want to.

She was still the only girl he'd kissed, but when he was 15, two weeks before he met Ashton, he got an almost blowjob from a girl at a party. It was almost because he hadn't been able to get it up, and both of them had been confused and embarrassed. He'd made some excuse about being too drunk, and had zipped up his pants and staggered away, trying to figure out with all the noise around him and inside him why he hadn't felt anything with her on her knees in front of him. But he knew. But he'd known.

He was scared when he made the ad, and he was scared when Ashton answered it. He was scared when he sent his picture out and he was scared when he got one from Ashton back, saw what he looked like and felt anticipation stir in his gut. He was scared when Ashton kissed him, gave him his proper first kiss, and he was scared when that kiss felt like nothing he'd ever felt before, felt like everything. He was scared because he knew.

Calum stared into his cornflakes. Michael was clanging through the cupboards behind him, saying something about what he wanted to get his mum for Christmas. She was outside on the porch, reading in her rocking chair, and Michael's dad was still upstairs, sleeping. Calum had woken up this morning with his wrist cramped and his hand empty—Luke had been awake, and he'd told him that Ashton had had to bike home early to take care of his siblings. Calum didn't know if he'd seen them holding hands or not, but either way, Luke had gone home soon after, and it was just him left.

“It's just that if girls are hard to shop for, mums are even harder, you know?” Mikey was saying. Calum could barely hear him. He could almost see his cornflakes growing soggier by the second, slowly sinking underneath the milk with only the highest parts of each flake poking above the surface, like weird orange goosebumps.

Michael circled around the table, putting a green bowl down and reaching for the cereal next to Calum's head. It was the bowl with the chip in it, the one Calum had dropped the first time he'd stayed over at Michael's house when they were 13. He'd known Michael for ages, known him when he was only the kid in his year 3 class who either said nothing or too much. His throat felt clogged with everything he'd told Michael over the years, all the stupid, pointless things about his life, his day, his feelings, all that stuff that he didn't talk about with other people. Everything about Mikey felt like an extension of Calum himself, and he couldn't imagine that Michael had any major secrets he kept from him. Couldn't imagine the idea of telling Michael that he would be wrong to assume the same about Calum.

“I know I don't need to start shopping at least until after the gig, but I still worry about this stuff,” Michael said. He flopped down in his seat and Calum stood up abruptly.

“Cal?” Michael looked up at him, confused, and Calum rounded the table and moved past him down the hall into the dark living room. His legs felt unsteady, and he sat down hard in the far corner of the couch. He heard a chair scrape and then Michael was standing in the doorway, cutting a strange shadow into the rectangle of light stretching across the floor.

“Calum?” Michael said. He walked slowly into the room, and with every step Calum could almost feel their friendship unraveling, everything rewinding back to the first time they met. It felt like running out of time, and no amount of repeating 'he was fine with Ashton, he was fine with Ashton' over and over in his head would make his chest stop feeling so tight.

“Hey, you okay?” Mikey sat down next to him, as close as ever, and Calum wondered miserably if he'd want to shift away once he heard what Calum had to say. “You've been being kind of weird all morning.”

“I—” Calum couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. He was sure, he was positive, he knew that he couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't— “What would you do if I told you something big? Something really weird?”

Michael shrugged.

“Depends on what it is.”

“What if it was something—something really,”—Calum swallowed and closed his eyes, his hands folded in between the crush of his knees so the bones in his fingers were grinding together—“really kind of gay?”

Michael drew in a quick, sharp breath beside him, and Calum felt a wave of nauseous heat pass over his body. He couldn't have moved if he wanted to. He was part of the couch now, he thought feverishly. Michael and his parents would have to have family movie nights with him there. They could set up an IV and feed him intravenously. Use him as a coffee table. There was really no other option at this point.

“Um,” said Michael. “Like, about you?”

Apparently he could move after all; he sagged down into the back of the couch, his knees curling halfway up to his chest, hands flying to cover his face. He felt like a beetle flipped on its back, completely and utterly exposed.

“Maybe?” he said.

“Oh,” Michael said in a small voice. “Okay. Just give me a sec.”

In reality, the silence probably was only a second, or a couple of them, but it felt like it stretched on for hours, every muscle in Calum's body primed for fight or flight, tense and strained. The inside of his head felt like a tangle of wire. He wanted a reaction and then he wanted to leave and never be seen by human beings ever again. He wanted a reaction and then he wanted Michael to hold him and tell him he was fine.

“Okay,” Michael said. “So, what, you—you're gay?”

Calum's chest jumped sharply with the hitch of his breath. It almost hurt.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “Fuck, I think I am. I know I am. I'm sorry.”

“What're you sorry about?” said Michael. He hadn't moved away from Calum yet, his thigh pressing warm and solid against Calum's side.

“I don't know,” Calum said. “Not telling you, I guess. Other stuff. I don't know.”

“Are you like, sure?”

Calum remembered Ashton above him and inside him, remembered seeing Ashton again yesterday and the supernova in his entire body the second their hands touched.

“I am,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Stop saying that,” Michael said, and now—now he was starting to sound upset, irritated, and Calum wanted to curl away from him, only there was no more space on the couch, the arm on one side of him and Michael on the other. “Did you think I'd be shitty about it? Is that why you didn't tell me?”

“No, I—I didn't know for sure until like a month ago,” Calum said. He couldn't tell Michael that yeah, part of him had thought Michael might be shitty, part of him had shoved this down because he didn't want to lose his best friend.

“A month ago?”

“Yeah.”

Calum risked a peek at Michael through his fingers; Michael was staring down at his own lap, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. He was frowning.

“But you'd thought about it before then,” he said.

“Yeah,” Calum admitted. He couldn't lie in the middle of finally telling the truth. “But I wasn't sure. I didn't—I didn't wanna believe it.”

Michael looked at him then, catching his gaze even through his fingers, and he looked serious enough that Calum pulled his hands away from his face and let himself look back.

“It's fine, just so you know,” Michael said. “That's shitty if you were sitting around not wanting to be like that, but I swear it's cool with me. Liking dick is totally fine.”

He sounded so serious, so into it, that Calum couldn't help but laugh, the sound somehow pushing some of the tension out of him.

“I mean it, Calum!” Michael said, and Calum laughed harder.

“I know,” Calum gasped. “I know, I know you do, I just—”

His vision was a car windshield in rain; he closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands back against his damp eyes. He wasn't sure if he was strong enough to take the swift punch of relief, knocked off kilter and confused as to why he was even crying at all. He sounded so stupid, laughing wet and unsteady by himself, and the feeling of being small and alone was just returning when he felt the tentative touch of Mikey's hands on his shoulder. Calum squirmed his way mindlessly into Michael's arms, pressing his face against the soft part of his tummy, and let Michael hold him.

The laughing and crying gave way to hiccuping at some point, and Michael started laughing.

“Do you need a glass of water or something?” he asked, clearly teasing, and Calum shoved away from him. His face felt hot, skin tight with the waxy feeling of dried tears, but he felt bizarrely better, comfortable here with Michael making fun of him, like he'd just lost at FIFA or something equally stupid.

“Shut up,” he said, wiping his arm over his face. His entire body jumped with a hiccup and Michael snorted. “M-maybe.”

Michael got him a glass of water and then tried to scare him in the middle of him drinking it, resulting in Calum almost choking. Calum threw what was left of the water at Mikey while he yelled something about two methods of getting rid of hiccups being better than one, and by the time they finished wrestling over the empty glass and squawking insults at each other, Calum's hiccups were gone.

“Is that all you needed to tell me?” Michael said. He'd made his way into Calum's lap somehow, lying across Calum's legs as they slowly went numb. Calum manfully resisted the urge to pet him like a cat and instead just smiled down at him, feeling so fond he thought he might explode with it.

“Yeah,” Calum said. “I mean, mostly. I'm kind of—I kind of—I have a thing for Ashton, so that's...something.” After the whole gay thing, saying that should have been nothing, but it was the first time he'd said it out loud really, admitted it to someone other than himself, and he didn't quite know how to feel about it. Saying it made it real, not just something he kept in his head and only looked at out of the corner of his eye.

“Oh my god,” Michael said. “Was that why you guys were staring at each other so weirdly when you met the other day? Was that your gaydar going off? Was that like, love at first sight?”

“What?” Calum exclaimed. “No, you idiot! I knew him before from like, a thing. Love at first sight, what kind of sap are you?”

“I'm not a sap!”

“Yes, you are! You read all the Twilight books and you cried over one of them!”

“What the fuck, man, I told you we never discuss that! Ever!”

Michael was pouting. It was incredibly cute, and Calum was so weirdly happy that they'd stuck by each other all these years. He couldn't have asked for a better best friend.

“Whatever,” Calum said.

There was a moment of silence, and then, like a punch in the dark, Michael came out with, “So are some of your songs about Ashton then?”

Calum blinked down at him. He could feel the moment that his face turned tomato red.

“What?” Calum said.

“Like, you said you knew him from before and that you liiiiike him, and you've been writing all these sappy love songs recently so—”

He was cut off mid-sentence by Calum pushing him off of his lap and onto the floor.

“Ha!” Michael yelled, twisting his arm around to point dramatically up at Calum. He'd landed on his stomach and didn't seem to be bothered enough to move. “That was definitely a yes! Are all of them about him?”

“No!” Calum said. He picked up a pillow that was nestled in the corner of the couch and threw it down at Michael's back. It bounced off harmlessly.

“Gotta Get Out?”

“No!”

“Heartbreak For Two?”

“No!”

“The new one you showed me yesterday that you said you came up with during football camp?”

Calum kicked Michael in the side. “Shut up!”

Michael laughed and laughed and laughed and maybe Calum felt like taking it all back because clearly Michael was the worst friend ever, but maybe deep down he was just relieved that Michael could take the piss out of him like always after not taking the piss out of him for being gay. Maybe.

“You loooove him,” Michael giggled, and Calum launched himself off the couch to try and jam his hand over Michael's stupid mouth.

Maybe was a strong word.

****

The day of the gig at the Annandale Hotel dawned cheery and terrifying, and Ashton invited the band over to his house for the final practice. It was a good move—practicing with an electric drum kit was different than practicing with Ashton finally on his own proper drum kit, and it took them a couple hours until Ashton was satisfied that they weren't going to completely humiliate themselves. Or at least he felt he wasn't going to; Luke had grown steadily greyer as the time to leave for the gig grew closer, Calum kept pulling at his shirt so much Ashton was sure he was going to stretch it completely out of shape, and Michael was just weirdly quiet. Ashton did his best to pump them up, but there was only so much he could do. It didn't help that Calum couldn't seem to look at him for more than two seconds at a time, abrupt and skittish, but Ashton tried not to dwell on that, because today wasn't about his failed love life. It was about music.

Ashton's mum had told him to invite them all to stay for supper, and said that she could drive them to the gig after. At first Ashton told her not to—remembering too many times when they hadn't exactly had enough food for the four people in their family, nevermind three extra teenage boys, but she had insisted. They were fine now, she'd said, and she wanted to make sure this band Ashton had been talking about so much was full of “good kids”.

His siblings certainly seemed to think they were alright. Lauren stayed up in her room avoiding them most of the day—Ashton suspected this was because she had taken one look at Luke and developed an enormous crush, as evidenced by the fact that she couldn't look at him without blushing at the dinner table. Falling quick and hard was a distinctly Irwin trait. Harry wasn't exactly immune either; he hung around watching them practice and somehow when Ashton wasn't looking he and Calum seemed to become fast friends. Ashton refused to be jealous of his own brother, but it was hard when Calum hadn't smiled at him like that all day. Or asked him what his favourite sport was and then acted mortally wounded when he didn't say football. Whatever.

After dinner they had about an hour or so before they had to leave for the gig. The boys all gathered in the living room while Michael tried to teach them how to play poker, probably in an attempt to get them to calm down. Ashton stayed only for a couple minutes; Calum had finally started looking at him again, but somehow it was more unsettling that he didn't glance away when Ashton caught him at it. He just stared Ashton down, looking somehow thoughtful and totally blank at the same time, impossible to read. Ashton hated that about him, and he escaped to the kitchen where his mum was doing dishes, needing to get away from all the stupid feelings he couldn't stop feeling.

“How are you holding up?” she asked when he appeared at her side. “Nervous for the show?”

He'd been playing in pubs with his mum's boyfriend for ages—this shouldn't have been making him nervous and his mum shouldn't have had to ask that. Clearly it was showing on his face.

He shrugged.

“Dunno.” He grabbed a dish towel from the shelf above the sink and started drying the dishes. Some of their cupboards didn't exactly have doors, but they still had places to put everything away regardless. “I mean, I know it'll be fine.”

His mum made a humming noise that could have been agreement or simply acknowledgement that she was listening. She rinsed a plate and put it in the slats of the dish rack; Ashton picked it up, clammy fingers barely finding purchase on its slippery sides. He swept the towel back and forth over the face of it, watching the bright sheen of water disappear, the towel slowly dampening under the weight of it.

Four dishes later, she said, “So which one is Calum?”

“Sorry?” Ashton said.

She gave him a look.

“You've been talking about this band for a bit, but you always talked a little bit more about one of them,” she said, lowering her voice slightly. Ashton stared at her hands in the water, bubbles clinging to the side of her arms, and wanted desperately to tell her to shut up. “I'm terrible with names and faces, you know that, I never caught which one of them Calum was.”

“It doesn't matter,” Ashton muttered.

“'Course it does!” his mum said, painfully chipper. “If my boy's got a crush, I'd like to know.”

“Mum—” Ashton hissed.

“Is it the blond one—the taller one, I mean, with the longer hair?”

“No, that's Michael,” Ashton said. “And can we just not talk about it?”

She gave him another look, and it was somehow double the one she'd aimed at him a moment ago.

“It's not the boy with the black hair is it?”

Ashton grabbed a handful of silverware and focused hard on drying each individual prong on a fork. She sighed slightly, and Ashton remembered dinner, remembered when he'd passed Calum the salt and their hands had touched and Calum had jerked back like he'd been burned. At least it was the second time Calum had made him look stupid in front of other people, so Ashton was used to it enough to be able to laugh along with Michael.

“Calum—” Ashton said haltingly, almost whispering. He didn't know how to keep secrets from his mum was the thing. He never had before. “He's not—well, he is, but he won't—I don't think he would let himself think of actually being with me. I mean, I hope he'll—but I don't—”

His voice sounded too thin, wobbling all unsteady, and he knew he'd revealed too much before his mum even turned her head to look at him.

“Oh, love,” she said, pulling her hands slowly out of the water. “You're a good boy. And I know you are good at taking care of people. But you can't fall in love with him just because he's broken.”

Words swelled in Ashton's throat, popping like soap bubbles before they even reached the end of his tongue. He closed his mouth and swallowed hard, looking at the ground.

“You have to take care of yourself,” his mum said. She wrapped an arm around his waist, giving him a firm squeeze into her side. He could feel the water on her hands soaking into his sweater, and he put his own arm around her back, turning it into a little sideways hug.

“I will,” he said.

Ashton could hear Calum laughing with Luke in the living room, his voice high and hiccupy. He sounded good. He sounded happy. He sounded whole, and Ashton closed his eyes and listened.

****

They were about to pull out of the driveway when Ashton noticed.

“Where are your guitars?” he asked, looking over the back seat into the empty trunk and then around the van at the three boys staring at him. They'd brought their stuff to practice at Ashton's house, acoustic guitars and electric ones, but now none of them were anywhere to be seen.

“We're not bringing them,” Michael said, the “duh” clear in his voice.

“What the hell do you think you're going to use to play?” Ashton said. “We're doing a gig, not a fucking mime act!”

“Ashton!” his mum called from the front.

“Sorry, mum,” he said automatically. Michael was starting to look confused, and the lines of terror etched on Luke's face were somehow getting deeper. Calum still looked blank.

“But you're not bringing your drum kit,” Michael said.

“My drum kit is huge!” Ashton said. “They'll have something like that provided usually, I mean, other places I've played at that usually have live bands did. But the guitars? No, you gotta bring that shit.”

“Oh god,” Luke suddenly said, dropping his face into his hands. “This was a terrible idea, we're not ready at all, we have no idea what we're doing.”

Michael was already wrestling the side door open, a manic look in his eyes.

“Shut up, Luke,” he said. “We just gotta go get them and it'll all be fine! It'll all be fine! Just get off your ass and help me!”

He was halfway down the driveway back towards the house by the time he finished his sentence, yelling back over his shoulder. Calum scrambled out after him, all skinny limbs and haste and lack of grace. Luke took several deep breaths, like a diver before going underwater, and followed them.

Ashton met his mum's eyes in the mirror above the dashboard. She was not quite succeeding in hiding her skepticism with her “I support you” eyebrows.

“Ashton, your house is locked!” Michael screamed.

Ashton's mum silently handed him the keys.

They pulled up outside the Annandale Hotel a little later than they meant to; Ashton's mum had to circle the block three times looking for some sort of entrance to a parking spot at the back of the pub—“what kind of performance space doesn't have a loading bay?”—before they gave in and just parked out the front on the street. Ashton half expected Michael to start yelling at them to get going as soon as they came to a stop, but instead all of them were quiet as they got out, handing each other guitars one by one like if they moved slow enough the time for the gig would just pass them by and they wouldn't have to do it at all. Ashton maybe should've been rolling his eyes and encouraging them to get moving, but his food was churning in his stomach, and it didn't matter how many gigs he'd done before—he got how nervous they were because he was maybe experiencing the same thing.

None of them had ever been to the Annandale before, so it took them a moment to get their bearings once in the building, standing stupidly in the foyer with a guitar in each hand. Ashton accidentally caught the eye of a tall bald guy with three tattoos of different women on his bare arms, and he had to swallow the instinctive urge to apologize when he stalked up to them.

“Are you kids roadies or something?” he asked.

“Um,” said Calum.

“No,” Ashton said. “We're, uh, we're one of the bands playing tonight, we're 5 Seconds of Summer.” Saying that name and including himself in the “we” gave him a stupid little thrill that he pushed down—he wasn't really part of the band, just guest-starring.

To his credit, the bald man didn't even raise an eyebrow at the four boys in front of him, just nodded after a slight pause and told them to follow him.

The pub was in a large room, with a bar at one end and a dance floor sweeping out over 75% of the space to the stage set into the far wall. There were a couple tables around the bar and some stools, a few people already seated, mostly middle-aged men that were probably regular customers. Yellow light spilled out from underneath the counter of the bar, bright on the white tops of Calum's shoes, and they stood there, staring. The floor seemed almost to curve down nearer to the stage, like it had been worn down by all of the feet that had stood and stomped on top of it, and even at a distance Ashton could see the pictures and records and posters up on the walls at the back of the stage. He felt it then, the gut-deep sense that this was a place with history.

Hopefully history they could add to.

The bald man lead them over to the stage and showed them where the amps were after they admitted that they had none. Ashton drifted away halfway through the conversation—amps didn't concern him—and over to the back of the stage, trailing a hand across the top of one of the cymbals. He'd been happy to see that there was indeed a drum kit already on the stage—he would've died on the spot if he'd been the one to not have his instrument after yelling at the boys that they were stupid to leave theirs.

“There's a room off back there,” the bald man said, pointing vaguely towards where they'd come from, “where you can put your gear when you're not onstage to keep it safe. Your opening band isn't here yet so you guys should do your soundcheck soon so that they'll be clear to set up when they arrive.”

“Thanks,” Michael said. “We got it, we can—we can do that, just, uh, one more thing. Do you have a bass guitar we could use?”

Ashton stared very intently at the drum stool and tried to pretend he didn't know the rest of them.

Soundcheck was brief and nerve-wracking, Calum fumbling on the left side of the stage with the bass he'd been provided with, Michael dashing to the amps every other strum to adjust the volume. Two more people wandered in while they were getting the levels of the mics right, two girls around their age, and Luke made an undignified squeaking noise that carried through the whole pub. Ashton just focused on trying to get the feel for the new kit in front of him—it had an extra drum at the side that he wasn't used to, and he decided he'd just ignore it—instead of jumping up and freaking out the other boys more by giving them advice or something. It had only been a couple minutes when a group of three guys with guitars came through the door and Michael spun around and announced loudly that “that was good, we're fine”.

Their opening act didn't seem very interested in talking to them, musician to musician, and the two girls standing over by one of the tables were strangely intimidating—what if they weren't fans of 5 Seconds of Summer and were fans of this other band and Ashton and the boys humiliated themselves by going to talk to them?—so they just unplugged their stuff, gave the stage over to the other band, and hightailed it to the room the bald man had told them about.

It said “GREEN ROOM” on the door, and Luke got pissy about the fact that the walls were not actually green once they were inside and setting their stuff down. The walls were a weird dull blue instead, and Ashton decided not to mention that “green room” was usually just the term for a backstage room in drama.

“It doesn't matter, Luke, shut up,” Michael said tersely, collapsing down in the only chair in the room. Ashton was feeling too hot to have anything on his head anymore, so he chucked his beanie down on the ground next to his drumsticks and sat down on the floor with his back to the door, trying to get himself to calm down. For some reason Calum sat down right next to him, which really did not help with the calming down thing.

“So, uh, we're playing Gotta Get Out first, right?” Luke said after a moment, pacing about the room. It clearly hadn't been vacuumed since the last people were in there, because there were candy wrappers and what looked like a cigarette lying strewn on the carpet like decorations.

Michael grunted. Calum tipped his head to rest on Ashton's shoulder, and Ashton froze. Luke, looking strangely tall from where Ashton was sitting, paused in his pacing to look down at them, his eyes flicking sharply from Calum to Ashton. Ashton held very still, like a child trying to hide in plain sight.

Luke didn't look away, and Ashton hurried to say, “Yeah, that's what we all decided earlier.”

“Whatever,” Michael said. “It'll be fine.”

“That's not what I was asking, Michael,” Luke snapped. He looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel, and Michael looked like he was going to sink into the chair and become one with it, the laziness of his sprawl belied by the tightness of his shoulders. He had pulled his phone out and was scrolling through it instead of looking at Luke. Ashton watched the click clench of Luke's jaw for a moment before Luke turned to the door.

“I gotta—I gotta go to the bathroom,” he said. “Can you guys—?”

Calum rolled slowly away from Ashton and they both got to their feet. Ashton wanted to catch Calum's eye—try to read him—but Calum ambled away to peer over Michael's shoulder, and Ashton was left staring at the slope of his back. Luke brushed by him, and Ashton shook himself and turned away, making a split second decision to follow Luke.

The hall outside the green room was narrow as a blood vessel, lit by dim, sporadic fluorescent lights. Ashton kind of liked it—it gave everything that shitty, grungy, familiar sort of feel that all the pubs he'd played in before had. Luke had stopped halfway down the hallway, leaning one hand against the wall, his head dipped towards the ground.

Ashton didn't know what he was supposed to say to him—he'd only known Luke for a little bit now, enough to know he liked him, but not enough to know what made him really tick, what would push him in a good direction or just drag him down. But he could hear Michael saying something low and muffled to Calum through the door, and more than anything he didn't want to hear it, so he slowly walked over to where Luke was, jamming his hands in his pockets and hovering awkwardly.

“It's different,” Luke said abruptly. “Than like playing in front of people at school.”

“It's not as different as you think it will be,” Ashton said. “You guys have done that before loads of times, haven't you?”

Luke shrugged jerkily.

“Not as a band,” Luke said. “It doesn't even make sense that we got this gig, you know? All we did was sit around in the music room and make shit covers. We don't belong here.”

“Hey,” Ashton said, circling around to stand in front of Luke. All he could see was the sweaty fringe of blond hair over his forehead. “Hey, look at me.” Luke looked up, his gaze as skittish as a deer. “You guys wanna make music. Of course you belong here. You guys decided to make a band. You've got songs and stuff. You don't need to be perfect to be allowed to have a shot.”

“I don't know if I can do the...talking stuff without sounding dumb,” Luke said quietly, glancing down at the ground, his face uncomfortably flushed. It came out fast, like it had been hiding behind a wall of other worries and had never gotten the chance to be voiced before. “Why do I have to be the one standing in the middle of the stage?”

“You've got the voice, Hemmings,” Ashton said. “You're really good. Come on, you know Michael would shit himself if you guys tried to make him and Calum sing everything.”

Luke snorted out a choked laugh that sounded kind of like a donkey braying. It was weirdly cute.

“He can sing, he just doesn't like to,” Luke said.

“That's why they need you,” Ashton said. “And you're gonna be fine. You know your name and you know our names and you know the band name. That's all you really need. Just introduce everyone at the start and the band and then you'll be playing music and it'll all work out.”

“I know,” Luke said. There was a little sheepish smile at the corner of his mouth, and Ashton counted it as a win.

“Good lad!” Ashton said, clapping him dramatically on the shoulder. He started circling around him, heading back towards the door. “Now we should collect the other boys and just go see what's happening, because I'm pretty sure the other band is actually on soon and they've only got a few songs and then it's us so—”

A hand on his shoulder stopped him. When he glanced back, Luke didn't look anything like the kid who'd been freaking out a moment ago, and Ashton was drawn up short by the seriousness on his face.

“Um,” said Luke. “You can just punch me if I'm wrong or something, but if you knowing Calum from before has anything to do with, like, gay stuff, um, if you like him—” He paused and took a deep breath and Ashton tried very hard to focus on the solid feel of the floor beneath his feet so that he wouldn't collapse or something stupid. “—you should know Mikey and me would be cool with it.”

Ashton thought about lying for just a second, thought about jerking away from Luke's warm hand and building back up a brick wall between them. But Luke was too earnest and Ashton was too weak and stupid in love with someone who hated the part of himself that would allow him to love Ashton back.

“I don't think Calum would be though,” Ashton said quietly.

And Luke laughed, quick and bright like a flare gun pointed right at Ashton's gut.

“Okay,” Luke said. “Okay. Forget I said anything.”

Luke moved past him, and Ashton could hear him opening the door and telling the other boys that they should be getting going. Ashton couldn't move; his head was filled with static, and Luke's voice sounded tinny and far away. Footsteps approached and Calum burst into his line of vision, laughing over his shoulder at something Michael was saying. He should have looked smaller or washed out in the pale yellow light, but he looked as alive as ever, bright acrylics superimposed on dirty watercolour. He caught Ashton's eye, hooking him sharp and accidental, and Ashton expected the smile on his face to fade.

It didn't, and something in Ashton's chest sputtered and coughed and kicked back to life.

They headed back out to the actual pub area in time to see the opening band finish their soundcheck. The guy standing in the centre of the stage, his hair spiked up like an anime character, caught Ashton's eye and gave him a sort of questioning look, like “you guys good?” Ashton nodded back, slightly pleased to be singled out as a leader, and then the guy rallied his band and they launched into their set.

They stayed skulking at the back as they listened, away from the crowd around the stage—if it could be called that. There were only about twelve people who seemed to be there to actually hear music; Ashton was pretty sure he couldn't count small the collection of men slouched at the bar as proper fans (or his mum, who had evidently finished paying the parking metre outside and was swaying awkwardly near the stage). Luke gave him a few nervous looks when they saw how few people there were, and Ashton knew he'd been promised 300 people, but he honestly didn't care anymore about numbers. He was here to perform and he would have still done so even if there had only been three people. When Luke realized he'd been caught, he flashed a wobbly smile that firmed up when Ashton returned it, and then they both went back to watching.

Like most of the bands Ashton had seen around these parts, they were some sort of light metal or something, with harsh vocals and lots of angry guitar. Michael was wide-eyed, clearly equal parts excited and intimidated, bouncing on his heels on the spot. He'd mentioned in the van that he'd never actually seen anyone performing live, so this was his first experience with it.

Ashton didn't know whether it was bias or what, but he thought the band up there wasn't as good as them, and he tuned out a little, melting a step or two back away from the boys so he could look at them instead of the stage.

It was strange, looking at the three of them standing next to each other, black silhouettes against the splashy lights on the stage, Michael gangling a little over the other two in height. Before when Ashton had taken note of them together it seemed like the three of them were a completed puzzle, one whole, cohesive thing that Ashton was trying to latch onto like a parasite. But Luke and Michael hadn't moved together when Ashton stepped back, and he could see the space between them waiting for him, light bleeding through in streaks on their exposed sides to break up the black wall of their backs.

Ashton moved up into the line again, arms knocking against the two boys on either side of him.

“We're gonna do awesome,” he said. “Seriously guys, it's gonna be good.”

They all turned to look at him, and he smiled as honest and sincere as he could, because he wasn't joking, not even a little. When they grinned back, all of their teeth glowed in the darkness, sharp and ready like baby wolves.

****

Calum had spent the day feeling like a house whose the furniture had been shifted three inches to left while he slept; nothing was different, but at the same time everything was, his whole existence knocked radically off-centre by the fact that not only did he finally know for certain that he was gay, but his friends knew too. Luke had been informed rather unceremoniously over text after Calum and Mikey had talked—“you can't not tell Luke!” “Shut up, I was always gonna tell Luke, I just happened to be in your house first!” Luke had called as soon as he got the text and had talked to Calum about it for a while, and it had been just as fine as it had been with Michael. And Calum was definitely relieved—he hadn't known what he was going to do if one of them decided they couldn't do this and kicked him out of the bands and their lives—but them knowing made it all so much more real. Especially the Ashton part of it.

He hadn't really been able to look at Ashton much all day without his insides turning into a floaty fuzzy mess of cotton candy fluff and nerves—Michael practically busted a gut at supper when Calum touched Ashton's hand and freaked out and spilled salt all over the table. He felt like he was bleeding feelings everywhere, like he'd ripped open the carefully packaged box of secrets in his chest, and it was all leaking out, ugly and visceral, staining everything he touched and making it so everyone could see. Acknowledging what he'd known for a month—that he wanted to climb Ashton like a tree, and maybe that he was falling a little in love with him more everytime he saw him—was scary, especially since Michael and Luke were now watching him fumble along with that acknowledgement.

It got better as the day went on—there were other scary things to think about, like the fact that they were going to do a live performance for the first time as a band. They were going to ask Ashton to join the band—Michael had told him about it the second Ashton and Luke stepped out of the green room earlier, and Calum resolved to have figured his stupid self out before they did. By the time they were standing there in a line, listening to their opening band, Calum was barely thinking about his tangled up feelings for Ashton at all.

So of course he found himself glancing over past Michael to watch Ashton watch the band and ended up completely unable to look away.

Ashton was beautiful; Calum had known this since he first opened his door a month ago with his heart in his throat and nothing but a towel on his body and saw Ashton standing shadowed and broad and tan on his front step. There was something about him that made Calum want to look, and then want to touch, no matter what Ashton was doing. And now—now he was outlined in dim strokes of light down the bridge of his nose and the curve of his mouth, his body slouched to the side against Luke, his arms folded and pulling the fabric of his shirt tight against the muscles in his shoulders. He looked calm and focused, older somehow in a way that struck Calum like a fist in the gut. He could still remember the confident way Ashton had touched him, how big his hand had felt on the inside of Calum's thigh, on his stomach, on his cock. He could remember how good it felt to have someone lead him through it. Take care of him.

Calum closed his eyes for a second, heat beating a staccato rhythm against the inside of his skull. His hands felt unbearably empty—he couldn't stop opening and closing them, searching for something to grip. He was planning before he'd even realized he was going to do something, calculating how much time they had before they had to go onstage. Two more songs? Three? It could be enough. He opened his eyes again and Ashton had one hand up, back of his thumb resting against his bottom lip, pulling it down slightly so Calum could see a flash of the shiny wet inside of his mouth. He was hit with a wave of want so intense he could barely breathe with it, exhilarated and sure. He wanted this. Who cared about being self-conscious? He was going to do this.

The opening band was just introducing their second song when Calum shuffled back behind Michael and reached out, touching Ashton's waist feather light. Ashton half-turned and saw him, his face cast into shadow in the movement.

“What?” Ashton whispered.

Calum just tightened his grip, pulling, and Ashton didn't ask anymore—he turned and followed Calum as he started backing out of the room, his eyes fixed on Ashton. Ashton glanced back once, looking at Luke and Michael, but they were still watching the band and Calum felt too gloriously free to worry about the embarrassment of them knowing what he was doing.

He slipped his hand up across Ashton's ribcage first and then drifted over to his arm at his side, wrapping around his wrist to pull him along easier. Calum dragged him down the hallway, turning off into a side corridor he'd spotted earlier, searching for somewhere they could be alone. He could still hear the thump of sound through the walls, could still feel it thick and urgent in his chest, driving him along.

“Calum?” Ashton said, clearly confused. But they needed to find a place before Calum felt like he could explain; belated shyness crawled over his skin, keeping his mouth shut.

He pulled Ashton over to an unmarked door and tugged at the handle. It didn't budge and Calum could feel his face flushing dark and ugly.

“Calum,” Ashton tried again, and Calum yanked him a little further down the hall, to another door. It was also locked, and Calum was just feeling like he was going to cry out of frustration when he felt the heat of Ashton crowd closer, the bones of his wrist twisting under Calum's grip.

“We can just use the green room,” Ashton said, voice close and warm near Calum's ear. Calum felt the heat in his cheeks kick up another degree; Ashton had realized what he was trying to find. He couldn't make himself move, just swaying on the spot, staring at the doorknob in his hand.

“But—Luke and Mikey might—”

“It'll be fine,” Ashton said, and this time he was the one pulling Calum down the hallway. He glanced back almost constantly, like he was making sure this was what Calum wanted, and Calum just looked back, helpless to hide anything anymore.

The door to the green room hit Ashton's back and he stumbled through it mindlessly, tugging Calum through it after him. Calum's grip on Ashton's wrist slipped away as he crowded up against Ashton, walking him back into the room until they could get the door shut behind them. Everything was so bright, fluorescent lights pounding down on them, that they didn't feel alone, not like they had in the blue shadows of Calum's bedroom; he fumbled back behind them, his palm hitting the wall with a flat, abrupt smacking sound, and finally found the light switch, plunging them into darkness.

Everything was louder in the dark, sharper—the melody and words of the music were indistinguishable with the door shut, so there was a wall of anonymous sound all around them, drums and bass and breathing, Ashton's heavy and quick on the side of Calum's face. Limbs fumbled and glanced off of each other, Calum's hands finding Ashton's hips and pulling them together, pulling them both back up against the door. Ashton clearly hadn't been expecting it and he almost fell forward, his hands coming up and thudding against the wood on either side of Calum's head, boxing him in.

One of Calum's legs was pushed up between Ashton's thighs. They were both breathing in time with the beat of the music, and Calum's fingers were flexing at Ashton's hips. Ashton shifted, pushing off like he was going to step back, and Calum grabbed harder at him, forcing him to stay. He could feel the push of Ashton's chest into his with each breath, and the weight of him was amazing, making everything go a little fuzzy and dreamy in Calum's head.

“Calum?” Ashton breathed. His hips were ticking back and forth by tiny increments, putting space between them and then pressing back into the jut of Calum's thigh, a little continuous dance, like he couldn't decided whether he wanted to do this or not.

“Sorry, I know this is a weird time,” Calum said, and his voice sounded almost strangled, strange to his own ears. “I just—I wanna—” He stopped, and drew in a sharp breath, trying to get himself under control. Ashton was beautiful, and Calum needed to get his hands all over him, learn him by touch instead of sight. His lungs were filled with something fizzy and every breath made him feel bright, loose. He could do this and this was fine. He was growing hard in his stupidly tight jeans, and he wasn't afraid of anything.

“What?” Ashton said. Something struck the side of Calum's face, sliding slick along the sweaty edge of his hairline, and Calum could feel Ashton's words hitting his cheek. Their heads were tipped together, and it would be so easy for Calum to nudge up and over and kiss him. “What are you—why are you even—”

“I wanna touch you,” Calum said, in one long, breathless rush.

He heard Ashton make a small, choked noise, his hips surging in tight against Calum's for just a second before he rocked back.

“Are you fucking with me?” he asked.

“No,” Calum said. His voice tipped up into a giddy laugh and he slid his hands across Ashton's waist and rucked up his shirt, tugging it up so he could get to the waistband of his jeans. “I didn't get to—last—last time when we—I didn't get to touch you and I wanted to, I want to. I think being nervous makes me turned on or something, 'cause like, right now, I'm just—”

Calum pushed his thigh up harder, grinding it into Ashton's crotch, and he caught Ashton's gasp on his cheek, pride bursting in his stomach. He could feel Ashton's cock pressing heavy against his leg, undeniable.

He popped the button of Ashton's pants, but suddenly Ashton was moving, one of his hands ripping one off of the door and grabbing Calum's wrist, stopping him from going any further. Their fingers were crushed together between their stomachs, knuckles poking into the give and take of each shaky breath, and Calum knew Ashton could feel his prick pressed stiff against his zip, against the heel of Ashton's hand. Ashton rubbed his palm forward, just a little, and the pressure scraped bright and hot up Calum's dick, forcing a small, high sound out of him.

“We've got no time,” Ashton whispered. “They're going to come looking for us in like five minutes, we've got to—we've got to perform, jesus, Calum. Boners onstage are not fun!” He was giggling by the end, sounding slightly hysterical, and Calum grinned at the sound and started churning his hips forward.

“I know, I know, I just—I wanted to touch you all of today,” Calum said. He rocked his hips up into the stutter of Ashton's, searching for friction, trying to distract him enough so Calum could pull his hand free. Ashton's nails were cutting into the back of his hand, Ashton holding on tighter and tighter until Calum could almost feel the shape of each of his bones.

“You've got a funny way of showing it,” Ashton said, his voice suddenly harsh. He wormed his thumb free and pressed hard on the fat push of Calum's dick, grinding the tooth of the zip down into him until Calum was shaking and trying to squirm away from the intensity of the touch, shoulders knocking uselessly against the door. He let out a little noise that sounded almost like a sob, and suddenly Ashton's hand was gone, and Calum relaxed back against the door, his dick throbbing hard, sending confused signals through his body, shocks of pain that felt good in a way he couldn't quite describe.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ashton was saying, his voice frantic, and Calum was shaking his head before he'd even really registered Ashton's words, knocking Ashton's head from his spot leaning on Calum's forehead.

“I like it,” he said softly. “I think—I think I like it when it hurts a bit.” They were so close, sheltered together under the darkness, and Calum could feel Ashton's body pressed all along his own, like they were meant to fit together. He took a deep breath, his fingers hooking just barely into the waistband of Ashton's pants, and maybe he hadn't planned on blurting out this kind of thing right this second, but he could feel it climbing up his throat, and he couldn't keep it down anymore. “And I think—I know—I like—”

****

Calum's body was suddenly jolted forward into Ashton's, shoulder crashing into Ashton's chin, as three loud knocks rattled the door.

“Guys!” Michael called over the distant sounds of music starting up again. “This is the last song before we're going on, okay, so open the damn door and let us in so we can get our guitars and shit!”

Calum's head fell forward onto Ashton's shoulder and he let out a long, slow groan. Ashton felt like his heart had been restarted with a defibrillator, jumping wildly in his chest, and he was frozen on the spot, unable to think of how to explain away this, unsure if he needed to. He felt Calum's hands slip away from his stomach, one of them contorting backwards to flick on the light switch.

The light was sudden and startling; he didn't know he'd gotten used to the dark, and it hurt to be seeing things as they were. Calum hadn't changed in some fundamental way in the past few minutes they'd been in here—he looked the same as ever, if a little more flushed and ruffled from Ashton's body on his. They just stared at each other for a moment, and then Ashton was backing away, huge, giant steps to put some space between them. Calum watched him go, still leaning against the door like it was all that was holding him up, and when Michael knocked again the force of it shook his whole body, one of his legs slipping, heel skidding across the dirty carpet. Ashton could see that Calum was still hard, pushing out the front of his jeans, and he shoved his hand down to cover his own cock.

“Come on, guys!” Michael yelled. “Fuck later!”

Ashton waited for the fracture lines to appear on Calum's face, waited for the frantic denial, but all Calum did was close his eyes and thump his head back against the door, sighing loudly.

“Just a second!” he shouted.

He opened his eyes and pushed away from the door, pink-cheeked and wearing that face again, the one Ashton couldn't read at all. He crossed the room in two steps, took Ashton's face in his hands, pulled him down, and kissed him hard and quick. Ashton didn't even have time to close his eyes before Calum was gone, rocking back down on his heels. His fingers were warm on Ashton's cheeks and Ashton couldn't really feel any part of his face except that and his mouth, everything weirdly muted and electric with the ghost of Calum's touch.

“Michael's got the worst fucking timing,” Calum muttered, eyes scanning over Ashton's face. “I'm not done with you. After, okay?”

Ashton nodded mindlessly, knocked stupid by the surprise of Calum kissing him, kissing him instead of freaking out over getting caught. Calum grinned at him, so bright it made his head ache almost as much as the lights, and then he was crossing to the door, pulling it open and letting a smug-faced Michael spill inside.

“Don't you say a fucking thing, Clifford,” Calum said, and Michael laughed, looking past him to waggle his eyebrows at Ashton. Ashton felt like he'd been transported to some sort of parallel universe.

“I don't even care,” Luke said, pushing Michael forward so he could get in, making a beeline for where his electric guitar was leaning against the wall. “I don't care what you all are on about, I just want to not fuck up onstage, so does anyone know where the hell my fucking guitar picks are?”

“They're right here, Luke, chill,” Calum said, scooping a plastic bag off the ground and tossing it to Luke. They were a whirlwind, the three of them, grabbing guitars and cords and capos, and Ashton was still about fifty seconds behind everything, feeling Calum kiss him and promise him an after. He'd been about to say something before Michael knocked, hadn't he?

“You okay, Ash?” Michael asked, pausing with his hand on the neck of an acoustic guitar. There was teasing waiting in corner of his mouth, but his eyes were serious, assessing. Ashton blinked, nodding, and the weird weightlessness of his moment with Calum ended, his feet slamming firmly back onto the ground like a kid jumping off the swings. The door was open and he could hear the other band screaming away, probably only about a minute away from being done, and the urgency of the moment caught up with him all at once.

“You guys need me to carry anything?” he asked, picking his drumsticks up off the ground and slapping his beanie haphazardly on his head. A guitar was promptly shoved into his hand and he stood up, giving the room a scan to make sure they had everything. “Are we good?”

“Better be,” Michael muttered. He pasted a smile on his face. “First gig, guys! Gonna be awesome!”

It was sarcasm, clearly, but they stood there for a moment in a strange half-circle, dripping with instruments and looking around at each other, and excitement started to build on every face. Michael's smile turned real and Luke let out a little giggle, and then Ashton found himself saying, “We gotta get out there, come on,” and holding the door for them to squeeze past him. Calum elbowed him in the ribs as he went, grinning cheeky and easy in a way Ashton wanted to see on his face more often, and Ashton thought, 'after, after'.

Luke was last in line, and he paused, leaning into Ashton and whispering low and fast, “you said—you said I just had to say the band name and then introduce everybody one by one, and then just whatever song we're playing first?”

“Yeah,” Ashton said. “You'll be fine. My name's Ashton, in case you've forgotten. I play the drums—”

“Fuck off,” Luke said, but he was smiling, and then Ashton was following him out into the hallway, letting the door swing shut behind him.

With the guitars in hand they had to walk in single file, parading one by one down the corridor. Something about it, looking down the narrow line of them, light flickering gritty and harsh over their faces and shoulders, hit Ashton hard, made it feel like he couldn't quite breathe properly. They were about to go onstage. They were about to play together, and everything was feeling like maybe it was going to go right for once in his life, and this moment somehow felt special, this hallway and these boys, sweating and nervous and new.

He fixed his eyes on the back of Luke's neck and followed him all the way up to the stage.

****

From the moment Ashton sat down at the drum kit and looked out at the excited faces in front of him, few as they may have been, he was only thinking about one thing. Luke managed to introduce them fine, speaking a bit too quickly, and Ashton gave a little drumroll for each name, just to remind Luke that he was there for support. He stumbled on the name of Gotta Get Out, but they all knew what he meant and they launched into it fine. And then, for Ashton at least, all that mattered was the drums.

He ripped his beanie off about a third of the way into the first song, and gave himself over into the heat and effort of it, letting everything shrink down to the beat, to the rush of adrenaline through his body. He could hear guitars squealing and roaring around him, Luke's voice belting it out over them all, and there was a calm deep in his body, the eye of the storm, centring him even in the sheer chaos of sound and sweat. He could feel the rhythm of the song in his chest, his heartbeat all tied up in the music, and he played as hard as he could, because twelve people still deserved all that he could give them. These three boys deserved all that he could give them.

He played and he played and he played, and when Calum looked back at him he didn't even think; he smiled as wide as he could.

****

“Okay,” Luke said, ducking back down to the mic after they finished a truly horrendous cover of Rolling In The Deep. “Um, uh, I think—I guess—” He looked around for help, Michael first and then Calum, and Calum just nodded in what he hoped was an encouraging manner. He was still thinking about the fact that he had definitely played the wrong chords for that song. Playing an actual bass guitar was very different from just playing the top string of a regular one. He'd thought he'd learned what sweat was at football camp, but apparently music had lots more to teach him.

He was fucking buzzing.

“Um,” said Luke. “We're gonna do some acoustic stuff now, just the three of us, so, uh—”

“Give it up for Ashton!” Calum yelled into his mic, sweeping his arm back to point. Ashton caught his eye over the mountain range of drums, and he went quickly from surprised to pleased, whacking out a short pattern as their small audience cheered. A weirdly competitive satisfaction went through Calum at the idea that he could still surprise Ashton, make him look at Calum in a new way, even after trying to drag him off for handjobs (although unsuccessful, still a good idea; being nervous definitely made him horny). He wanted to find out all the different ways Ashton could look at him, and allowing himself to think that without shame felt like being at the perfect edge of drunk, out of control but on top of the world.

“Yeah!” Luke said as the cheers died down. Michael was still whooping loudly into his own mic, so Luke waited until he'd stopped to continue. “Yeah, Ash is awesome. But I guess he's gonna go join you guys or something, and in a minute we're gonna play some more stuff. So. Yeah.”

“Smooth, Lucas,” Calum said into his mic, and a few girls in the crowd laughed. He grinned at them, already half in love with the whole bunch of them, and then stepped back to swing the guitar strap over his head.

He heard Ashton clambering about behind him and waited for him to pass so he could grab his arm, say something to him—he wasn't sure what, but he wanted to share this glowing feeling with him somehow, see it reflected in Ashton's stupid dimples. Ashton never passed though; when Calum glanced over he saw that Ashton had gone around the other side of the stage, clapping Michael on the back as he went. He was holding his beanie in his hand and Calum could see that sweat had spread and dampened his shirt from the shoulders down his back, sticking it to him. Calum looked away quickly trying not to feel worried. Or aroused. Both were useless right now, and he was too happy about playing to dwell on it. He was sure now more than ever that he'd made the right choice; music was what he was meant to do, not football.

Across the stage, Michael caught his eye just as Calum was sitting down with his acoustic guitar at the ready. He squinted slightly, clearly trying to convey something vaguely threatening, and Calum smiled placidly. Adrenaline was a marvelous thing: Calum felt like he'd had three energy drinks and was sure everything was going to be fine.

Michael shook his head, grinning fierce and delighted, and Luke started announcing their next song.

Calum focused on the guitar in his hand and on the song he'd wrote, trying not to think of Ashton in the audience, watching him. It would be fine, he told himself. As soon as this was done, he was going to figure out what to say to Ashton to make him believe him, and then they were going to do nights like this over and over again, all four of them.

The thought sat warm and true in his stomach, burning up through his arms like an extra shot of strength, and he played and played and played.

****

Ashton didn't mean to, but he ended up on Calum's side of the stage anyway, right at the front, about a metre away from him. He was ever so slightly off to the side, so at least he wasn't constantly in Calum's line of view, which would probably have been unwanted and creepy. His mum was hanging out a little bit behind him in the crowd—she'd given him a hug when he hopped offstage, which was expected but still kind of embarrassing, but then she'd just handed him his camera and given him some space so that some of the girls—the fans—could approach him. Only a few had, one of them asking him if he was really in the band because she hadn't seen him before—“uh, no, not really, they just asked me to do drums tonight,”—and another one talking about how she thought he was a good drummer. Once Luke started talking though, everyone's attention was pulled back to the stage, and maybe—maybe Ashton had just wanted to get a better view of the way Calum held a guitar. Maybe he just couldn't help being drawn closer to him.

When he was onstage everything had been a slurred blur of light and the backs of the boys' heads when he'd chanced a proper glance up from the drums, but now he could see all of them perfectly, lined up along the front of the stage on their boxes like a weird sit-down family gathering or a collection of kindergarteners. Michael didn't have a guitar, and Luke's just seemed to be sitting uselessly in his lap as he sang—Calum was apparently the lead and only guitarist on this song. It wasn't one they'd shown him before, and he raised his camera higher, tilting it so everyone was in the frame.

It totally wasn't weird that Ashton was filming. There was a girl in the very centre of the crowd, right in front of Luke, who was filming too, and everytime Luke glanced down at her he turned red and deliberately looked away. Ashton just wanted to be sure that he had a record of some part of this night, a memory of the three of them in case everything went sideways after this and he didn't see them again.

And Calum—Calum onstage—was maybe what he wanted to remember the most.

From where he was standing, the wall of the stage cut off a slice of the left side of Calum's body, but he could see his face and the way his arm swung hard across the strings, confident and casual, his whole body swaying and moving with the sound. He glanced up from the frets to look at Luke and Michael occasionally, with this little grin like he just wanted to share this with them, and Ashton could see it when his smile hit their faces—it was contagious, Luke's mouth widening enough to distort the lyrics, Michael giggling on the far side of the stage.

Ashton was careful not to make a noise, not wanting to draw Calum's attention, but it wasn't up to him in the end. Calum glanced back at where the drums were, then out into the crowd, searching, and when Calum's eyes met his over the top of his camera, Ashton felt paralyzed, stupid all the way through for filming. Calum's face was devoid of any expression, like he hadn't even registered that it was Ashton he was looking at, like he was looking straight through him, and for a second Ashton felt farther away from him than he'd ever felt before.

And then Calum smiled.

Ashton remembered the first time he made Calum smile, standing in his kitchen when Calum was nervous and wet and half-naked and the taste of him was heavy on Ashton's mouth. He had felt it like a punch then and he felt it like one now, knocked off-kilter and swaying with the force of it. It meant more now, was the thing—now it seemed like maybe it could mean everything. Calum smiled and Ashton grinned back and hope started to build again in his gut.

Ashton waited for Calum to glance back at him and pulled a face when he did, pointing the camera at him menacingly. Calum laughed bright and easy, tipping back and almost falling off the box, legs and arms everywhere even while he kept playing, kept strumming away, and Ashton could feel the stretch of his own grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. It was going to tear him apart, this feeling, this kind of light, and he didn't even think he would mind all that much. Calum was just...glowing. To Ashton, he was glowing with light.

From the moment he'd met Calum, he'd been plunged straight into the ocean without a proper crew to help him stay afloat, and he didn't know how seasick he'd been, going back and forth between hope and disappointment. Maybe there was no real reason to believe that this time the clouds really were clearing up and that they could pull through to the shore, but Calum had kissed him and said “after”. Calum was smiling at him now.

Ashton filmed the whole song, catching Michael's fidgeting and Luke's increasingly depressing facial expressions and Calum's creaky, aching voice, and when Calum strummed the last chord and looked up all shy and cute and everyone started clapping, he made sure he saved the video, because this moment was something he never wanted to forget.

****

The outside air hit his sweaty cheeks like the first sip of water in a desert—calming every nerve and waking him up all at the same time. He had to stop, skidding mid-step down the front of the Annandale Hotel, and close his eyes for just a second, letting the heat and cool swirl to an equilibrium through his body. There was a glancing hit at his elbow and Luke's voice fading in and out in an apology. Footsteps clattered and he heard Calum and Michael laughing giddy and stupid over some unknown joke, and when Ashton opened his eyes he could swear that there more stars than he'd ever seen in a Sydney sky.

“That was sick,” Michael was saying. His and Luke's hair were practically glowing in the moonlight, otherworldly, and Ashton could see every single tooth when he smiled. “This is—this is the best thing I have ever done.”

“Group hug!” Luke said, throwing his arms up in the air and staggering towards Michael and Calum like a zombie. It was a credit to the joy of the moment that no one made any pretense of annoyance, and within seconds the three of them—all connected like a clumped up ball of rice—were stumbling over and pulling Ashton in. They were so warm, all of them; Ashton pressed his face against someone's cheek and didn't care who it was.

When they disengaged, they didn't go far, all of them hovering close enough to knock shoulders and nudge each other's elbows. Ashton knew his mum was just inside talking to the manager of the pub, and they only had a moment left in the place of their triumph before they would have to pack things up and go. Before they would have to separate, one by one, until Ashton was left alone in the van. He didn't want to think about that.

“I can't believe that one girl came so far,” Michael said, eyes shining. “Where did she say she was from? Like, outside of Sydney for sure.”

“It was ages away, yeah,” Calum said.

“We have actual fans,” Luke said. The nervous air that had been about him all evening was gone completely, and Ashton was struck with how different he seemed when he was vibrating with excitement. Of course it's different to you, a small voice said. You don't know much about them yet.

“A grand total of twelve!” Michael said.

“Shut up!” Calum laughed, shoving him. “They were awesome. We'll have more people next time.”

Laughter died down and smiles faded to matching expectant expressions. As one, they all turned to look at Ashton, almost robotic in their synchronicity.

“Yeah!” said Ashton, a little taken aback. He didn't know what they wanted him to say. This was 5 Seconds of Summer's moment, really. “It was great.”

“It was, wasn't it,” Michael said, his voice buoyed up like he'd just gotten validated by the queen or something. He turned to Luke, shoving at his shoulder, and Luke just took it, grinning like Michael was the best thing he'd ever seen. “Who would have thought, huh? Three losers from music class booked a gig and rocked it!”

The other two cheered, but the sound of their voices was lost in a sweep of cool wind, pulling at Ashton's shirt, tugging at the bare skin of his hands, hanging loose and empty beside him. He saw a flicker of their three black silhouettes, shoulder to shoulder, Ashton's spot gone. Time to go, he thought at no one in particular.

“You guys were great,” he said firmly, waiting until they were all looking at him. “You guys will do awesome in like other gigs and stuff.” He threw out a thumbs up and then immediately wished he hadn't. “I got a video of the one song, so I can put it on my channel and stuff and tell people about you guys for sure.”

They were staring at him like they couldn't understand what was coming out of his mouth. After a second, Michael blinked, and it almost looked like he was about to smile. Panic swept up through Ashton's limbs and he gave a sharp salute, starting to back up to the stairs again.

“I'm just gonna start getting our gear and stuff—”

“Ashton, wait!”

It was Calum, his voice high and happy, and Ashton stopped in mid-turn, his body cutting a perfect diagonal between the door of the Annandale and the group of boys behind him. He looked back over his shoulder.

“What?”

“Well,” Calum said. He took a step forward, moving away from the boys and closer to Ashton, and Ashton found himself slowly turning to face him, pulled inexorably by his presence. “You can't leave yet, because we've got a very important question for you.”

And he sunk to one knee.

Ashton blinked twice to make sure he wasn't hallucinating, but no, there was Calum, looking up at him with the moonlight painting his face in silvery blue, a smile starting to wind its way up the side of his face.

“You're not serious,” Ashton said, and he could hear the laughter starting up in his voice. He coughed, raised his fist in front of his mouth, and watched Calum closely. The glow was back on him, and this time it was so strong that Ashton could almost feel the heat of it warm on his own cheeks.

“Shut up,” Calum giggled. “Okay. This is important.”

“White or pink flowers for the wedding?” Luke shouted. Michael slapped a hand over his mouth and the two of them wavered on the stop, snickering and wrestling.

“Shut up, Luke!” Calum looked back and flipped him the bird before turning once more to Ashton. His face was so flushed that Ashton could see it even in the watery light, and he jammed his fist harder against his smile, crushing his lips to his teeth until it hurt, just to prove to himself that this was actually happening.

“Our question,” Calum said slowly. “Is—will you, Ashton Irwin, join the band 5 Seconds of Summer...for good?”

Ashton's fist fell from his mouth and he laughed, the sound echoing all the way down the street. Something in him said that he shouldn't be surprised, because he'd felt it from the first time the four of them played together, how good they could be, but he was still surprised, still suddenly full up on happiness at being allowed to stay.

“Yes!” he said. “Of course I will, you fucking turnip!” He didn't even know what he was saying except for the fact that he'd gotten out the “yes”, which was the most important part.

Michael punched his hands up into the air, letting out a wordless cheer, but he hadn't gotten more than one step towards Ashton before Calum was throwing a hand up for him to stop. He didn't look back at them this time, his eyes not leaving Ashton's.

“I've got another question,” he said.

He stood up and started walking slowly up to Ashton, the smile fading from his face to leave this strange, cautious look. When he was a foot away, he lifted his hands like he was going to cup Ashton's face, and Ashton startled backwards, eyes flicking to where Michael and Luke were standing, silently watching them.

“They're right there,” Ashton whispered. “This is kind of—”

“I told them,” Calum said, close enough now that Ashton could barely see the other two boys past his face. “They know, and I'm cool with it.”

This time when he reached up to Ashton's face, Ashton didn't move away, letting Calum's fingers curve warm on his cheeks. His hands were careful and yet the touch still knocked something loose in Ashton's chest, everything falling and smashing and screaming inside of him.

“I really like you,” Calum said softly. “That's what I was going to tell you earlier. But what I was going to ask you is—” He paused, smiling nervous and small, and everything around them seemed to fall completely silent, just for one moment. “Will you go out with me?”

Ashton closed his eyes, his breath stuck halfway up his throat. There was a dizzy, unreal feeling about everything, about Calum's touch, his words—but Ashton had always believed in his eyes, and when he opened them Calum was still there, looking at him.

“Like, as in date me,” Calum clarified. “In—in a gay way.”

“How gay?” Luke yelled. Ashton distantly saw Michael gave him a dirty look, and Luke shrunk back, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. “Super gay.”

Ashton opened and closed his mouth, trying not to look like he was trembling. It was cold, was all. It was cold outside, and Calum wanted to date him, and he couldn't stop looking at him, eyes skipping over every part of his face because cameras weren't enough and Ashton wanted to remember how he looked in this second, this moment when Ashton loved him so fiercely he could feel it in every part of his body.

“Are you sure?” he said weakly. It felt like an echo in his mouth, and he remembered standing in Calum's kitchen a month ago and asking him the same thing.

Calum nodded, and he was looking at Ashton the same way, drinking him in.

“Absolutely sure?” Ashton's hands drifted up, clutching fistfuls of fabric at Calum's waist, wrists knocking against the points of his hips, and he was swaying forward, swaying in. One more time. Just let him agree one more time.

“I'm so sure,” Calum said, “I'll say it again on one knee if you want me to, I swear—” and Ashton was surging forward and cutting him off, kissing the words right out of his mouth.

It was how Ashton had always thought the dramatic movie-kisses would go: there was cheering in the background and his head was swirling so much that it was almost like a camera zooming around them, catching every second of what Ashton was sure was the best kiss of his life. There was no need for the fireworks or the music though—all he needed was Calum's mouth soft and shaking under his, each dizzy press forward like a rediscovery. His lungs were crushed under the feeling blooming in his chest, but he couldn't pull away, yanking Calum closer until he was sure he was going to pass out, fall to the ground or maybe just ascend to heaven early with the parting gift of Calum actually wanting him for real.

Bodies slammed into them on all sides, and their teeth knocked together painfully. Ashton pulled his head back, already laughing, and opened his eyes to see Michael and Luke crushing them in, their faces weirdly close like they were all about to start a fourway makeout session. Calum looked dazed and happy and Ashton leaned in despite the heads trying to poke in his way, pressing their foreheads together.

“Aw, aren't they cute, Luke?” Michael cooed, right in Ashton's ear.

Luke cackled, and Ashton strained forward, dropping a kiss on Calum's lips.

“Do you remember,” Calum said, and his eyes were full of stars, full of smashed glass, sharp and bright and beautiful, “when we first met? And you said—you said it was going to be you and me?”

Ashton remembered, remembered Calum all soft and ashamed against his chest, and he dug his fingers into his waist, keeping them grounded to the here and the now, to this place and these stupid boys on either side of them.

“I remember,” Ashton said. “Guess we don't have to say 'fuck your friends' though.”

“Hey!” Michael said indignantly, and Luke snorted.

When Calum laughed, the sound seemed to go beyond their small circle, stretching up into the open expanse of the sky above them like a hand, like a ladder up to some sort of unseen future. Ashton could feel the tug of it, the promise, and he drank it down in another kiss, ignoring the catcalls and laughter around them. When he was a kid the sound of those would have felt like attacks, but now—now they felt as warm as the arms around him.

“You and me,” Calum said, and Ashton felt the words twist deep in his chest and lock into place, more sure and true than anything he'd ever felt.

“You and me,” he promised.

It was one he knew he could keep.

**Author's Note:**

> a year later, in an interview:
> 
> "So the three of you went to the same high school, but Ashton went to a different one. How did you locate your crucial fourth member?"
> 
> "Oh, you know," Calum said. "We found him on craigslist."


End file.
